Leonard "Live-Forever" Jones



Leonard Jones (July 3, 1797 – August 30, 1868), oft styled as Leonard "Live Forever" Jones, was an American politician and evangelist for a theology of physical immortality through moral living.

Background
Leonard Jones was described by Samuel Howard Ford, in "Ford's Christian Repository and Home Circle" (1889), as: "a large, robust man; [with] sandy hair [that] fell on his broad shoulders; his beard was the longest one I ever saw; it came down to his knees; he had a rich voice and when he spoke in public he would lean on the chair or desk before him and lift his feet into the air with a movement the most grotesque. From a pathetic reference to the dear dead who need not have died he would make one of these frog-leaps, which would convulse the crowd with laughter." Rev. J.W. Cunningham further detailed Jones's oratory style: "Religiously, he was demonstrative if allowed so to be, and politically, as a speaker he was 'uproarious.' He roared like one possessed; he jumped up and down, stamped, kicked, clapped, thumped, and with his heavy cane whacked with vigor the stand before him."

Prior to his public life and religious ministry of physical immortality, Jones was, according to the account of Cunningham, a land speculator who "amassed a considerable fortune", and became engaged to "a lady of high social position in Kentucky." However, the marriage was not to be, and soon after the engagement was ended, Jones began a string of religious conversions.

Moving from congregration to congregation over a span of a decade, Jones spent time with the United Brethren, the Methodists, and the Shakers, the latter to whom he granted a lot of five thousand acres in Illinois, having spent six and a half years with them. After leaving the Shakers, he was baptised as a Mormon, but abandoned it too after "not receiving the gift of tongue."

After these many years of searchings and conversions, Jones at last found the religious calling he was to herald the remainder of his days in the preachings of an itinerant minister called McDaniel, a "strange genius", who taught that "man by faith can live forever". Together, the pair resolved that the area of Columbus, Kentucky would be the new capital of their "live-forever faith", mapping out a city plan with all the amenities a proper urban centre could require, with the exception of cemeteries and funeral parlors, rendered unnecessary by their teachings.

As it would turn out, McDaniel died in Ohio soon thereafter, leaving Jones to carry on the work alone.

In the decades that followed, Jones made a name for himself as an eccentric in Kentucky and the surrounding states, travelling around the country in order to spread the word of his "live-forever" religion and to promote himself as a political candidate (on the "High Moral" ticket) in a number of ballot races, including the U.S. Presidency.

In the end, after all his effort to remain of a high moral state and to live forever, Leonard Jones was reported to have passed away in his sleep on August 30, 1868 at Louisville, Kentucky.

"Death is nothing but unbelief"
"Look him straight in the eye and he will cower and sneak away like a whipped cur."

Resources

 * Keven McQueen, "Offbeat Kentuckians: Legends to Lunatics" (amazon.com) &mdash; features a biographical segment on "Live Forever" Jones