Collection: Books and Periodicals > Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins

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Title: Volume 072-3 - July 2018 Collection Type: Books and Periodicals Collection Name: Nevada County Historical Society Bulletins # of Pages: 6 Download PDF: User Login Required Download OCR Text: User Login Required

Date Scanned: 2019-08-01 06:46:52 OCR Software Version #: tesseract 5.4.1 Item Sourced From: PDF First Created: 2025-03-17 04:06:33 Last Updated: 2025-03-17 04:06:33

Original Held At: Searls Historical Library Location: 161 Nevada City Hwy, Nevada City, CA 95959

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A photo of Frances Jones and her niece, Helen, in the garden of the Jones family home at 125 S. Auburn St., Grass Valley, courtesy of the Searls Historical Library. Recognizing the near certainty of mass starvations in the German-occupied areas, America's ambassador to Great Britain, Walter Hines Page, turned to London-based mining engineer, Herbert Hoover, who had successfully evacuated 100,000 stranded Americans during the early weeks of the war. On October 22, 1914 Hoover gathered eight friends in his office to discuss the situation. Most were mining engineers: many were former classmates from Stanford University. Hoover's goal was unprecedented: to rescue an entire nation from starvation for as long as the war lasted.’ The challenge was formidable. Hoover needed to find funds to secure and ship the food; get approval from the British to allow relief ships to come through the blockade to Rotterdam in the Netherlands; move the food by canal into Belgium; and work with the Belgians to establish kitchens to feed civilians. A few months later Hoover acknowledged the scope of the challenge when he wrote: “I do not know that history produces any parallel of a population of seven million people surrounded by a ring of steel.”* Under Hoover's firm leadership the organization he created, the Commission for Relief in Belgium (CRB), would be described by one British government official as “a piratical state organized for benevolence.”° Forget Me Not Hoover immediately focused on mounting a public opinion campaign to mobilize American support for the www. NevadaCountyHistory.org CRB's mission. The campaign included a direct appeal from King Albert, a dashing and heroic figure who was then leading his troops in the small portion of Belgium not yet under German occupation. The King's appeal, written under fire in the battle before Dunkirk, appeared in newspapers across America on November 1, 1914. He wrote: “It is a great comfort to me in in this hour of sorrow and misfortune to feel that a great-hearted, disinterested people is directing its efforts to relieve the distress of the unoffending civilian population of my country.” In the California newspapers Hoover added that the CRB was largely made up of Californians, who ...”should have the support of our own state.”° Because the Hoovers had extensive connections in the state, the outreach was greater here than elsewhere in the country. Some of those connections were to Nevada County, the place where Hoover had begun his mining career. He was friends with George W. Starr, and with former Malakoff associates Hennen Jennings and Henry Perkins, who later lived in London. Hoover had also worked closely with William B. Bourn in the summer of 1914 to evacuate Americans when war broke out in Europe. ’ Hoover's wife, Lou, visited California and appealed to universities, chambers of commerce, businesses, and social and religious groups. She was instrumental in motivating San Francisco to sponsor the first American relief ship, the Camino, which reached Rotterdam in December. Grass Valley's Miss Frances The citizens of Nevada County responded immediately to the King's appeal. By November 7" the Nevada City Chamber of Commerce had formed a committee comprised of District Attorney Frederick L. Arbogast, Dr. Alfred H. Tickell and William H. Martin who went through the business district soliciting funds.* In Grass Valley Frances G. Jones led the Belgian relief effort.’ The daughter of Dr. and Mrs. William C. Jones, Miss Frances, as she was known, was forty-one years old and unmarried. She shared the family home at 125 South Auburn St. with two of her three brothers, the doctors Carl P. Jones and John T. Jones, who were also unmarried. Miss Frances's interest in Belgian relief may have been influenced by the two years she spent abroad in 1908-10 with NCHS Bulletin July 2018