David C. Jones and the Civil War*

Book: Tilton Illinois Centennial 1884 - 1984 page 130 (I am not sure where this information came from originally.)
*The inevitable came. After all the years of argument and contention, the determination of the great issue was left to the arbitrament of the sword. The South fired on the flag, three days after the firing of Fort Sumter on April 12, 1863.
The call to arms came. President Lincoln called 75,000 volunteers to serve for three months to put down the rebellion. Vermilion County responded to the call. Captain Samuel Frazier organized a company which was assigned to the 12th Illinois Infantry. The men from Tilton were: The second lieutenant Joseph Kirkland, Privates: Jacob Moore, David C. Jones, John E. Jones, Abe Wadsworth Payne (it is unclear if he lived in TIlton at the time he volunteered, but lived there later), others not known.
The following article is from the Civil War newspaper, "The Prairie Chicken" Editor Joseph Kirkland.
"David C. Jones was a miner in the Carbon Coal Mines in Tilton, the son of the oldest miner in the work. At the beginning of the war he volunteered in Company C, 12th Illinois Volunteer Infantry. He was the tallest man of his Company, and nearly or quite the tallest in that great and stalwart regiment. At the end of three months he was chosen second lieutenant and by the promotion of one, the wounding of another, and the removal of a third of his superior officers, he became as such men usually do, the Captain of his company, in which capacity his time expired, and he was duly mustered out, and returned to Tilton.
In the draft just completed, a brother miner, a poor man, with a large and burdensome family, "drew a prize", and of course considered that he must leave the helpless household to the care of others while he spent a year in the field. Rich men were paying $1,000, $1200, $1500, or more for substitutes. Where was he to get such a sum!
Captain Jones (who will probably never be anything else than a soldier) - a man as poor as himself volunteered to go in his place, freely, rejecting the bounty money offered by others and asking nothing from him whose burden he assumed.
Words would be wasted in explaining such an act as this. We, in the midst of whom the transaction occurred, feel the patriotism, heroism, and generosity thus displayed by one of our own number. What other locality, or what other calling can produce a parallel to this act of one of the coal miners in Tilton.
David C. Jones was also in Co. B Ill. Inf. in September of 1864. He was discharged on May 25, 1865. He was 6' 4" tall, and born in New Whale's (noticed misspelled Wales), England. He had brown hair and hazel eyes.
The article goes on about others....