Eleven recorded generations — New Spain, 1600 → Tudor Kent → colonial Culpeper →
Winn Parish → Beaumont → the Austin Hill Country, 2026. Assembled with love from family records, twenty years of family email, Jordan's own research tree, and verified public records — checked line by line against published history, August 2026.
A private page for our family — please don't post it publicly. Living relatives appear briefly or not at all, on purpose. If something is wrong or missing, tell Jordan: this page is alive.
The household today
JJ
Jordan Keith Jones
b. November 27, 1979, San Joaquin, California · Leander, Texas today. General Manager, H‑E‑B #592 Leander. Keeper of this tree since at least 2010.
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DJ
Danielle White Jones
née Zabaneh · Administrator, H‑E‑B #812 Georgetown. Married Jordan July 28, 2026 at the Chapel of the Flowers, Las Vegas.
Married July 28, 2026 · Chapel of the Flowers, Las Vegas · honeymoon at Secrets/Dreams La Romana, Dominican Republic, August 2026
Children of the house
PJPeyton Olivia Jonesb. February 2, 2012 · Jordan & Megan's daughter. Her father wrote her a letter the morning she was born.DOCEMAIL
AZAlia Sarah Zabanehb. 2013 · Danielle's child. Full name given by Jordan, August 2026.DOCFAMILY
RZReagan Jordan Zabanehb. 2016 · Danielle's child — middle name Jordan. Full name given by Jordan, August 2026.DOCFAMILY
Earlier chapters — both recorded, both closed
Megan Marie Jonesnée Zihlman, of a Travis County family · Peyton's mom.
🐶 Teddy — Resident good boy, per the household's shared “Teddy 🐶” calendar.
IParents & siblings
Jordan's father
RJ
Robert Chris Jones
b. September 28, 1950, Houston. Writer of long letters to his children — “For my Son!”, “Proud” — and buyer of surprise Mustang convertibles.
⚭
Jordan's mother · in loving memory
BJ
Brenda Jones
née Brenda J. Baca · b. March 8, 1957, Fresno, California. A long career at the Winstead law firm, Austin. Signed everything “Love you, Mom”.
JJJessica Marie “Jess” JonesEMAILTREE
Sister · b. September 8, 1984 · married Ben (fall 2011); they honeymooned at Dreams La Romana — the same resort complex Jordan & Danielle chose fifteen years later. In the Denver area since the mid‑2010s.
JJJennifer Ashley JonesEMAILTREEFAMILY
Sister · b. January 21, 1986, San Joaquin, California · mother of Abby — confirmed by Jordan, August 2026. Kept the family photo archive, including pictures of “grandpa Button”. Spent time living in Spain in 2011.
IIGrandparents
Father's side · Chris's parents
Paternal grandfather
HJ
Harvey Mabry Jones Jr.
b. April 15, 1921, Beaumont, TX · d. December 13, 1998, Shreveport, LA. Baylor back and a true two-way player — fullback AND linebacker, #12, Cleveland Rams 1944–45, NFL Champion 1945; #11 for Washington, 1947. Five career interceptions. Married Edna in Houston, October 14, 1949.
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Paternal grandmother
ER
Edna Marie Rucker
b. July 4, 1930, Luling, Caldwell County, Texas — on her parents' third wedding anniversary. Daughter of Julias Edgar Rucker & Hazel Marie Holland. d. November 6, 1982, Houston — confirmed by the family, August 2026 — resting at Brookside Memorial Park, where her parents' graves stand verified. She has no Find a Grave memorial of her own — yet. An original letter written to her by her own grandmother resurfaced in 2010.
VJValli Lou JonesEMAILTREE
Their daughter — Jordan's aunt · b. January 30, 1953, Harris County. The one who picked up the phone and called the Houston Joneses during the 2010 family-history hunt.
HJHunter Mabry JonesEMAILTREE
Harvey's son from his first marriage, with Lolene Annette Shippey — Jordan's half-uncle · b. December 27, 1942, Houston; raised in DeQuincy, Louisiana. Married Bobbie Hendricks; raised an adopted daughter, Brandy Lynn. “I can see the Harvey Jones in Hunter,” Jordan wrote when the photos surfaced.
Mother's side · Brenda's parents
Maternal grandfather
AB
Alfred Thomas Baca
b. June 15, 1930, San Leandro, California. “Mom's Dad Thomas Baca,” Jordan wrote in 2010 — the tree records him Alfred Thomas. Son of Manuel Baca & Athalia Romero, carrying the Belen, New Mexico Baca line traced below all the way to Spain.
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Maternal grandmother
DB
Dorothy Marie Brewster
b. May 5, 1932, Marthaville, Natchitoches Parish, Louisiana. The name this register was missing — recovered August 12, 2026, from Jordan's own tree. Through her father, the Winn Parish Durham line below; through her mother, the family's “grandpa Button”.
DBDiana Marie BacaEMAILTREE
Their daughter — Jordan's aunt · b. April 16, 1951, San Francisco. Brenda's older sister, and almost certainly the “Diana” of the 2014 “Diana & Grandma” video.
LBLinda Joyce BacaTREEFAMILY
Their daughter — Jordan's aunt · b. April 20, 1952, San Francisco. She has passed; no date is recorded yet, and no public obituary has surfaced.
IIIGreat-grandparents
Father's side · parents of Harvey Jr.
Great-grandfather
HS
Harvey Mabry Jones Sr.
b. January 23, 1896, Beaumont — a five-year-old when Spindletop blew in · married Laura in Beaumont, March 29, 1920 · d. 1951, Jefferson County — CONFIRMED by his grave at Forest Lawn Memorial Park, Beaumont, with his parents matched exactly. The letters' “June 1970, Genesee, Pennsylvania” is refuted: that cemetery holds no adult Jones at all. Only the exact day (February 9) still rests on a single index.
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Great-grandmother
LM
Laura Moak
b. March 12, 1894, Texas · d. November 7, 1978, Jefferson Co., TX. After the marriage ended she wed Joseph Columbus Cornwell (1886–1964) of Catahoula Parish — Harvey Jr.'s step‑father, of Beaumont.
Father's side · parents of Edna
Great-grandfather
JR
Julias Edgar Rucker
b. November 9, 1904, Rolla, Hot Spring County, Arkansas · d. July 14, 1986, Pasadena, Texas. Edna's father — married Hazel on July 4, 1927, in Norphlet, Arkansas, in the middle of the great south-Arkansas oil boom. He and Hazel rest together at Brookside Memorial Park, Houston, plot Oak Terrace 6 — graves verified August 2026. (The 2010 letters spell him Julius; the tree, Julias.)
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Great-grandmother
HH
Hazel Marie Holland
b. September 17, 1912, Sulphur Springs, Texas · d. October 10, 1989, Pasadena, Texas. Edna's mother — her own mother was Paralee “Lee” Williams of Como, Hopkins County. The “brick wall” side now has doors.
MPMelba Alene (Rucker) ParkerTREEPUBLICFAMILY
Their daughter, Edna's older sister — Jordan's great-aunt · 1929–2019. Married Tommy Parker; three children: Terry, Greg, and Randy. That Randy is cousin Randy Parker of the 2010 genealogy letters — the man who found the letter to Edna was her sister Melba's son, keeping his mother's family papers.
Mother's side · parents of Alfred
Great-grandfather
MB
Manuel Baca
b. about 1904, New Mexico — Alfred's father, of the Belen Baca line, born in the last years of the New Mexico Territory.
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Great-grandmother
AR
Athalia Romero
b. February 25, 1905, New Mexico · d. December 7, 1991, Fresno — Alfred's mother; her Romero people came up through Trinchera, Colorado.
Mother's side · parents of Dorothy
Great-grandfather
JB
John Hamilton Brewster
b. June 6, 1903, Butler County, Kansas · d. July 1974, Jackson, Alabama — Dorothy's father, of the Sabine Parish Brewsters; his mother was Luella Durham of the Winn Parish line.
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Great-grandmother
AR
Algelee Gladys Russell
b. November 22, 1913, Texas · d. December 29, 1991, San Joaquin, California — Dorothy's mother. After John she married Arvel Clarence Button (1911–1989), the “grandpa Button” of the family photo archive, brother of Herbert Alton Button. The Button chapter, it turns out, belongs to this generation.
IVGreat-great-grandparents & beyond
AJAndrew Prather JonesEMAILTREE
Father's side — father of Harvey Sr. · b. April 14, 1857, Goliad, Texas — in the very months of the Cart War · d. June 9, 1929. Father of Harvey Sr.; husband of Amanda Petronile “Mandy” Sherman (1863–1918); son of Mabra Madden Jones (1820, Kentucky – 1902, Palestine, Texas) and Sarah Lovelady of Missouri. Andrew's and Amanda's photographed headstones stand in the Jones family plot at Magnolia Cemetery, Beaumont.
JRJames Daniel RuckerEMAILTREE
Father's side — father of Julias, husband of Cora · b. March 1, 1877, Lono, Arkansas · d. August 6, 1967 — SETTLED by his grave at New Hope Haven of Rest Cemetery, Rolla, where he was carried home to lie beside Cora. Took his own 120-acre federal land grant in 1901, echoing his grandfather's 160 acres of 1857. The chain James Pascal → Isaac Cornelius → James Daniel → Julias → Edna is now confirmed against independent records, mostly to the exact day.
CRCora Agnes (Thomas) RuckerEMAILTREE
Father's side — James Daniel's wife, Edna's grandmother · b. October 1876, Hot Spring County, Arkansas · d. August 19, 1966 — buried at New Hope Haven of Rest Cemetery, Rolla. A member of New Hope Missionary Baptist Church; her 1966 obituary counted six sons, three daughters, 17 grandchildren and 29 great-grandchildren. Still one of the two candidate authors of the letter.
PHParalee “Lee” (Williams) HollandEMAILTREE
Father's side — Hazel's mother · b. May 3, 1891, Como, Texas · d. October 31, 1957 — Hazel's mother; the letter's other candidate author.
Stories the records tell
Cleveland Municipal Stadium, where the 1945 championship was played at −8°F. Columbus Metropolitan Library / DPLA, via Wikimedia Commons · no known copyright restrictions
1945 · Cleveland
The grandfather who won an NFL Championship
Harvey Mabry Jones Jr. — Jordan's grandfather — was signed by the Cleveland Rams on April 15, 1944: his 23rd birthday, exactly. He earned it as a true two-way player, starting at fullback AND linebacker in 1944, and finishing with five career interceptions run back hard (28.8 yards each). In the 1945 championship season's only loss, at Philadelphia, a game account preserves the one play with his name on it: a 44-yard touchdown catch “down the middle” — a play the official books mis-credit to the famous Bob Waterfield. That December 16, at −8°F beside Lake Erie, the Rams beat Washington 15–14 on a safety that changed an NFL rule; his champion's share came to about $1,409. Cut in the postwar talent flood of 1946, he fought back to Washington in 1947 — and so shared locker rooms with both Waterfield and Sammy Baugh, arguably the two greatest quarterbacks of the decade. He wore #12 in Cleveland; the #11 was Washington.
Pro Football Archives · Pro Football Journal (T.J. Troup) · Wikipedia, 1945 NFL Championship Game
Oil derricks over a Texas downtown — Kilgore, 1939, standing here for the boom world of Norphlet and Luling. Russell Lee, FSA/OWI, Library of Congress · no known copyright restrictions
1927–1982 · the oil belt
Edna, the Fourth of July girl
Her parents married on July 4, 1927, in Norphlet, Arkansas — a town in the wild middle of the Smackover oil boom, five years after a gas blowout there burned in 300-foot flames. Three years later, on their third wedding anniversary, Edna Marie was born in Luling, Texas, an oilfield town pumping 2.5 million barrels a year: a Fourth of July baby from a Fourth of July wedding, born along the Arkansas–Texas oil belt her family followed. On October 14, 1949, in Houston, at nineteen, she married the Beaumont halfback who had won the NFL Championship four years earlier. She died November 6, 1982 — confirmed by the family — and rests at Brookside Memorial Park, Houston. Jordan was not yet three.
Hooker compiled genealogy · confirmed by the family, August 2026
The Beaumont Oil Exchange in 1901 — the boom town Harvey Sr. grew up in. Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
January 10, 1901 · Beaumont
The boy who watched Beaumont explode
Harvey Sr. was a five-year-old in Beaumont when the Lucas gusher blew at Spindletop — a stream of oil over 100 feet high, uncapped for nine days, 100,000 barrels a day. His town of 9,427 people swelled to roughly 50,000 almost overnight; a tract that hadn't sold for $150 went for $20,000 and was flipped within fifteen minutes for $50,000; Texaco, Gulf and Humble were all founded in Beaumont within the year. His own father, Andrew, had been born in Goliad in 1857 — in the very months of the Cart War, when the hanging tree on the courthouse lawn saw both court-approved and lawless executions. Frontier Goliad to boomtown Beaumont in one generation.
Texas State Historical Association — Spindletop, Beaumont, Cart War
Belen, New Mexico, photographed in 1904. The Land of Sunshine (1904), via Wikimedia Commons · no known copyright restrictions
1600 · New Spain
Older than the Mayflower
The tree said the Bacas came from Spain in 1740. The scholarship says something better: every documented Baca line in New Mexico — about five million descendants today — runs to one household: Cristóbal Baca, born ~1567 in Mexico City, a maestro pasamanero (a master maker of gold-thread trim) who rode north in 1600 as a military captain, with his wife Ana Ortiz and four children, to reinforce the starving Santa Fe colony. If the Belen line holds, Brenda's people were American two decades before the Mayflower sailed. And the old family legend — descent from Cabeza de Vaca, the conquistador who walked barefoot across Texas, the “cow's head” name won marking a mountain pass with a skull — is exactly that: a legend the family carried proudly for centuries, charming and unproven.
Chávez, Origins of New Mexico Families · Beyond Origins of NM Families · Wikipedia, Baca family of New Mexico
A grandparent's letter of 1905 — not Edna's letter, but its close cousin: the same ink, the same care. Edna's own waits to be transcribed. Photo: Wolff90126, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
c. early 1900s · found 2010
The letter to Edna
In June 2010, cousin Randy Parker wrote: “I recently came into possession of some Rucker family documents and pictures… It just so happens I found an original letter written to your Grandmother by her ‘Grandmother’. I believe it was Cora Rucker who was the author. However, it may have been Parlee [sic] Holland.” The family has since closed the circle on WHY Randy had them: he is Melba's son — Edna's own nephew — keeping his mother's family papers. Two scanned pages still sit attached to that email — “Letter to Edna Rucker from her Grandmother, pg 1 of 2” — a great-great-grandmother speaking directly across a century. Nobody has yet transcribed the handwriting. That is a family job waiting for a quiet afternoon.
Email with attachments, June 8, 2010
February 2, 2012 · 9:48 a.m.
“Dear Peyton”
The morning Peyton Olivia was born — February 2, 2012, 9:48 a.m. — Jordan emailed himself a letter. It begins: “Dear Peyton, While Megan and I are waiting for your birth there are a few things I would like to tell you about us and this world at this moment in time.” Inside it is the sentence he wanted her to keep: “People connections are the only thing of true value in this world… remember that.” And its promise: “Peyton, you are the princess of our family… your Parents will always put you before themselves in any and every situation, that is absolute.” Grandma Brenda replied the next day: “This is beautiful Jordan… She will forever cherish this.”
Email, February 2–3, 2012 — retrieved and excerpted August 2026
The Winn Parish courthouse, Winnfield, photographed c. 1938 for the WPA. WPA, via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
Winn Parish, Louisiana
The Free State of Winn
The Durhams farmed Louisiana's most contrarian parish. Winn's delegate voted NO on secession in 1861 and refused to make it unanimous; in the 1890s the parish went Populist; in 1912 it gave Socialist Eugene Debs 35% of its vote; and it raised Huey Long. The family's own patriarch, James Allen Durham — born Georgia 1814, eighteen children across two marriages — met an end the family genealogy preserves exactly: “One hot summer day, while butchering hogs, he had a heart attack and died. The year was 1899.” He was 84, still working his own stock. Two generations up, family tradition holds that Joab Durham led a band of North Carolina patriots and stood at Kings Mountain and Guilford Courthouse — the battles that broke Cornwallis in the South. Elvira Lee Brady's stone still stands at Mars Hill: “DURHAM Elvira L. Brady, w/o W.F.”
Clear Creek Durham genealogy · Winn Parish histories · Mars Hill Cemetery transcription
J.M.W. Turner's The Shipwreck (1805) — the calamity at sea every Rucker generation retold. Tate, via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
c. 1700 · Virginia
The immigrant who swam ashore
For three centuries the Ruckers have told it the same way: Peter Rucker was shipwrecked near the mouth of the James River and swam ashore. What the documents show is a man with a German-sounding name standing up in a Virginia courthouse on May 8, 1704, among nine French refugees, becoming an Englishman on paper — origin genuinely unknown; even the Rucker Family Society calls his birth date “pure speculation.” His son John entered family lore another way: hauled before the House of Burgesses for handing out “several large bowls of Punch” at the 1742 Orange County election, throwing the undersheriff out the door, and getting the poll shut down overnight. Reprimanded from the Chair, he paid his fees and went home. The line ran through Tennessee to Hot Spring County, Arkansas — where Cora Rucker's 1966 send-off counted 17 grandchildren and 29 great-grandchildren from one Lono farm marriage begun the day after Christmas, 1897.
Rucker Family Society · Wood, The Rucker Family Genealogy (1932) · Sentinel-Record obituary, 1966
Sir Richard Rich, sketched from life by Hans Holbein the Younger, c. 1530s–40s. Royal Collection, via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
1500s · London & Kent
The villain in the family
The register's Tudor line survived its audit — these are real people, correctly married, one documented lineage. Which means the family gets Richard Rich, one of Tudor England's great villains: the man whose testimony doomed Thomas More (who told the court Rich was “a great dicer and gamester, and not of any commendable fame”), and who, when the Tower's lieutenant balked at torturing the preacher Anne Askew, took off his gown and turned the rack's wheels with his own hands. Alongside him: Sir William Garrard, Lord Mayor of London 1555 — a Muscovy Company founder whose ledger carries the real stain of financing slaving voyages; and Sir Anthony Aucher, who died of his wounds at the fall of Calais in 1558. All of these lines funnel through the Lovelace family — the Cavalier poet, a governor of New York, and the Gorsuch children who resettled in Virginia — one of colonial America's genuine gateways.
Wikipedia / DNB / History of Parliament · audited August 2026
The Bayahibe shoreline, La Romana province, Dominican Republic — the coast of both honeymoons. Photo: Oleg Yunakov, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
2011 & 2026 · La Romana
Two honeymoons, one shoreline
In 2011, Brenda forwarded Jordan a deal: “This is where Ben & Jess are going for their honeymoon” — Dreams La Romana, Dominican Republic. Fifteen years later, Jordan and Danielle booked their own honeymoon on the same La Romana shoreline for August 2026. Nobody planned the rhyme. The tree just does that sometimes.
Emails, 2011 and 2026
Events the family lived through
Moments of history with a family name inside them, oldest to newest.
1600
Enrico Martínez's 1602 map of New Mexico, drawn to document Oñate's entrada — the expedition world Cristóbal Baca rode into. Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
The entrada north
Cristóbal Baca of Mexico City — a master maker of gold-thread trim turned military captain — rides north with his wife Ana Ortiz and four children to reinforce the starving Santa Fe colony. Every documented Baca line in New Mexico begins with this one household. If the Belen line holds, the family has been American for twenty years longer than the Mayflower's passengers.
Baca line · as recorded
Chávez, Origins of New Mexico Families
January 1558
The French taking of Calais from the English, 1558 — a period Italian engraving. Sir Anthony Aucher died of wounds from this siege. Bibliothèque nationale de France, via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
The fall of Calais
The Duke of Guise storms England's last toehold in France. Sir Anthony Aucher, Marshal of Calais, is wounded in the siege and dies two days after the surrender — the loss Queen Mary said would be found engraved on her heart.
Tudor line · as recorded
Landed families of Britain, Aucher of Otterden
November 30, 1634
William Halsall's Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor (1882) — the Mayflower, not the Francis, standing here for every Great Migration crossing. Pilgrim Hall Museum, via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
The Francis sails from Ipswich
Rowland Stebbins boards the Francis with his wife Sarah Whiting and four children for the 3,000-mile crossing to Massachusetts Bay — then follows William Pynchon up the Connecticut River to help stake Springfield out of forest. Every Wilbraham Stebbins in this register stands downstream of that one voyage.
Stebbins line · documented
Memorial Hall Museum, the Stebbins family
May 8, 1704
A Virginia planter's tobacco packed for England by enslaved laborers — a 1759 engraving of the world colonial Virginia ran on. via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
An Englishman on paper
A man with a German-sounding name stands up in a Virginia courthouse among nine French refugees and is naturalized: Peter Rucker, the immigrant. Where he came from, no document has ever said — the Rucker Family Society calls even his birth date “pure speculation.” The family told it simpler for three hundred years: he was shipwrecked, and he swam.
Rucker line · documented
Rucker Family Society · Journals of the House of Burgesses
June 1742
Punch bowls at the polls
John Rucker, Peter's son, is hauled before the House of Burgesses for “Great Misdemeanours” at the Orange County election: handing out large bowls of punch for his candidate, throwing the undersheriff out the door, and getting the poll shut down overnight. Reprimanded from the Chair, he pays his fees and goes home.
Rucker line · documented colonial arc
Journals of the House of Burgesses 1742–47, in Wood (1932)
October 7, 1780
The death of Major Ferguson at Kings Mountain, October 7, 1780 — 1863 engraving after Alonzo Chappel. via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
Kings Mountain
Frontier militia destroy a Loyalist force at Kings Mountain — one of the battles that broke Cornwallis in the South. Family tradition, consistent across the compiled Durham genealogies, puts Joab Durham there as a leader of North Carolina patriots, and at Guilford Courthouse the following spring.
Durham line · family tradition
Clear Creek Durham genealogy
1857
The Hanging Tree on the Goliad courthouse grounds, still standing. Photo: Ken Lund, via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 2.0
The Cart War
Andrew Prather Jones is born in Goliad in the very months Anglo raiders begin attacking Tejano ox-cart freighters on the San Antonio road. The hanging tree on the courthouse lawn sees both court-ordered and lawless executions before armed escorts end it that December.
Jones line
Texas State Historical Association
1861
The Winn Parish courthouse, Winnfield, photographed c. 1938 for the WPA. WPA, via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
Winn says no
At Louisiana's secession convention, Winn Parish's delegate votes no — and refuses to make the final tally unanimous. The parish the Durhams farmed goes on being contrary for a century: Populist in the 1890s, 35% for Socialist Eugene Debs in 1912, and the boyhood home of Huey Long.
Durham line
Winn Parish histories
January 10, 1901
The Lucas Gusher blowing at Spindletop, Beaumont — January 10, 1901. via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
Spindletop
The Lucas gusher blows at Beaumont — a stream of oil over 100 feet high, uncapped for nine days. The town of 9,427 swells toward 50,000; Texaco, Gulf and Humble are founded within the year. Harvey Mabry Jones Sr. is a five-year-old in that town.
Jones line
Texas State Historical Association
1927–1930
Weddings on the oil belt
Julius Edgar Rucker marries Hazel Marie Holland on July 4, 1927, in Norphlet, Arkansas — deep in the Smackover boom, five years after a gas blowout there burned in 300-foot flames. Three years later, on their third anniversary, Edna Marie is born in Luling, Texas, an oilfield town pumping 2.5 million barrels a year.
Rucker line · documented
Hooker genealogy · Texas State Historical Association
1930s
“Broke, baby sick, and car trouble!” — Dorothea Lange on US 99 near Tracy, California, February 1937. Farm Security Administration / Library of Congress · public domain
West to the Valley
The Dust Bowl migration carries over a million people to California — Louisianans and Oklahomans among them, all called “Okies” regardless. A Louisiana-born girl (Dorothy), her Texas-born mother (Algelee) and the Oklahoma City Buttons land in the San Joaquin Valley on exactly that current; Steinbeck wrote the novel about their road.
Brewster & Button lines
Historical context
December 16, 1945
Cleveland Municipal Stadium, where the 1945 championship was played at −8°F. Columbus Metropolitan Library / DPLA, via Wikimedia Commons · no known copyright restrictions
The −8° championship
Cleveland Municipal Stadium, beside a frozen Lake Erie: Rams 15, Redskins 14. Sammy Baugh's pass from his own end zone hits the goal post for the deciding safety — a play that changed an NFL rule. Harvey Mabry Jones Jr., #12, is on the champion roster; his winner's share comes to about $1,409.
Jones line · verified
Wikipedia, 1945 NFL Championship Game · Pro Football Archives
People worth knowing about
Figures from history inside or beside this tree — each labeled kin, as-recorded, or context.
Cristóbal Baca
~1567 Mexico City – New Mexico
Trunk ancestor of the Belen Bacas · as recorded
A maestro pasamanero — master maker of gold-thread trimmings — who rode north as a military captain in 1600. Roughly five million people descend from his household; nearly anyone with seven generations in New Mexico does.
Chávez · Beyond Origins of NM Families
Sir Richard Rich, sketched from life by Hans Holbein the Younger, c. 1530s–40s. Royal Collection, via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
Richard Rich, 1st Baron Rich
c. 1496–1567 · Lord Chancellor of England
Ancestor as recorded, via the Lovelace gateway
One of Tudor England's great villains: his testimony doomed Thomas More — who told the court Rich was “a great dicer and gamester, and not of any commendable fame” — and when the Tower's lieutenant balked at torturing Anne Askew, Rich turned the rack's wheels himself. He served every master, outlived them all, and founded Felsted School.
Wikipedia / DNB
Edward VI, c. 1546 — the boy king said to have died in Sir Thomas Wroth's arms. Attr. William Scrots, via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
Sir Thomas Wroth
1516–1573 · Durants, Enfield
Married Mary Rich · ancestor couple as recorded
His marriage to Mary was bought from Thomas Cromwell for 300 marks. He became the boy king Edward VI's favorite gentleman of the privy chamber — the fifteen-year-old king is said to have died in his arms — then fled Mary I's England and returned the moment Elizabeth took the throne.
Dictionary of National Biography
Sir William Garrard, painted c. 1568. Sir William Garrard (c.1568), unknown artist. Photo: City of London Corporation, via Art UK / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Sir William Garrard
1507–1571 · Lord Mayor of London, 1555
Ancestor as recorded
A haberdasher's rise to Lord Mayor and founding officer of the Muscovy Company, England's first joint-stock venture. The ledger has a stain this register does not hide: he financed Guinea ventures and invested in Hawkins's third slaving voyage, whose ruin at San Juan de Ulúa cost him £21,000 and his reputation.
Wikipedia · History of Parliament
Sir Anthony Aucher
d. January 1558, Calais
Ancestor as recorded
Master of the Jewel House under Henry VIII, then Marshal of Calais — England's last toehold in France — where he died of siege wounds two days after the surrender.
Landed families of Britain
Richard Lovelace, painted in armor by William Dobson, c. 1645. Dulwich Picture Gallery, via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
Richard & Francis Lovelace
1600s · Kent → America
The gateway family · as recorded
Every Tudor name above funnels into one Kent family: Richard the Cavalier poet (“Stone walls do not a prison make”), his brother Francis, second colonial governor of New York, and their aunt Anne (Lovelace) Gorsuch, whose children resettled in Virginia and Maryland — one of colonial America's genuine gateway families.
Wikipedia
Peter Rucker
d. 1743, Orange County, Virginia
Immigrant ancestor
Origin unknown — German name, naturalized among Frenchmen, birth date “pure speculation” per his own family society. What survives instead is the legend: shipwrecked at the mouth of the James, he swam ashore. By his death he held land, a large family, and a will proved in Orange County.
Rucker Family Society · Wood (1932)
Rowland Stebbins
1592–1671 · Essex → Springfield, Mass.
Immigrant ancestor · documented
Sailed from Ipswich aboard the Francis in 1634 and helped seed Springfield, Longmeadow, Northampton and Deerfield — one of the best-documented families in New England, with a 1,386-page published genealogy.
Stebbins Genealogy (1904)
Goodrich Lightfoot
1682–1738 · Spotsylvania, Virginia
Ancestor as recorded
Son of a Virginia Council nominee, named for his mother's family, sheriff and coroner of frontier Spotsylvania. His death has its own account: “He went to the Courthouse in good health, was taken ill there, carried home that evening, and… died the next morning.”
Compiled Lightfoot genealogies
Pedro Bautista Pino
c. 1752–1829 · New Mexico
The Pino family's great name · context
New Mexico's only delegate to the Spanish Cortes of Cádiz — he crossed an ocean at sixty, arrived just after the great Constitution passed, and published the first book about New Mexico. The rhyme survives: “Don Pedro fue, don Pedro vino.” The register's own Pinos, Maria Manuela's people, fill the humbler church books of Belen.
Real Academia de la Historia
Bartolomé Baca
Governor of New Mexico, 1823–1825
Baca of Tomé, the next village · context
While Luis Baca was a boy in Belen, the most powerful man in the district was another Baca — governor, sheep baron across a claimed 1.28-million-acre grant, married to a Chávez. Baca–Chávez and Baca–Pino marriages were the fabric of Rio Abajo society, exactly the pattern in this register.
Wikipedia
Senator Huey P. Long, c. 1935. via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
Huey Long
1893–1935 · Winn Parish, Louisiana
No kin — a neighbor · context
The Kingfish grew up in the same contrary hill parish the Durhams farmed — the parish that voted no on secession and gave Eugene Debs 35%. He is here for what he says about the soil the family came from.
Wikipedia
Bob Waterfield in 1945 — Harvey's teammate in the championship season. via Wikimedia Commons · public domain
Bob Waterfield & Sammy Baugh
the 1940s NFL
Harvey Jr.'s teammates · context
Harvey shared locker rooms with arguably the two finest quarterbacks of the decade: rookie-MVP Waterfield on the 1945 champion Rams, and Slingin' Sammy in Washington during his 2,938-yard 1947 — plus one record-book quirk: the 44-yard touchdown Harvey caught in 1945 is still mis-credited to Waterfield; the game account says Albie Reisz threw it.
Pro Football Archives · Pro Football Journal
The long threads
Older generations, as recorded in Jordan's own MyHeritage research tree.
Treat everything past the mid-1800s as a well-kept family map, not a proof.
Jones
Colonial Virginia → Kentucky → Goliad & Beaumont, Texas
Willoughby Jones1700–1779 · unverified — a name only a Frederick County courthouse can vouch for
Harvey Mabry Jones Sr.1896–1951 · the 1970 claim found no support anywhere
Harvey Mabry Jones Jr.1921–1998 · NFL
The August 2026 sweep hardened the Texas half: Mabra → Andrew is independently corroborated, and Andrew P. and Amanda P. Jones lie photographed in the Jones family plot at Magnolia Cemetery, Beaumont. The Find a Grave “Mabry Madden Jones (1880–1930)” is RESOLVED — a different man, a Beaumont meat cutter, son of Cyrus Y. Jones & Nancy Ann Wooten, buried in that same plot cluster; whether Cyrus was a son of the elder Mabra (making the younger man a grandson named for him) is the new open question. Above Stephen, the colonial chain stays placeholder-grade.
Baca
Mexico City (1560s) → New Mexico 1600 → Belen → Fresno
Juan Phelipe Bacab. 1740, “Castilla, Spain” — unproven, and almost certainly a tree graft; see below
Juan Jose Baca1765 “Zamudio, Vizcaya” – 1843 · m. Margarita Chavez · the Spain claim doesn't hold
Luis Baca1806–1891, Belen · m. Maria Manuela Pino
Jesus Maria Baca1836–1917 · m. Juanita Sanchez
Alejandro Bacab. 1871, Santa Fe
Manuel Bacab. abt 1904 · m. Athalia Romero
Alfred Thomas Bacab. 1930 · Jordan's grandfather
CORRECTED, August 2026 — and the truth is better than the tree. The “Spain 1740” origin is internally contradictory (Castile vs Basque Zamudio) and unsupported anywhere; every published genealogy of the New Mexico Bacas — Fray Angélico Chávez's Origins of New Mexico Families foremost — roots the Belen Bacas in ONE household: Cristóbal Baca, born ~1567 in Mexico City, who rode north in 1600 to reinforce the Santa Fe colony. If the Belen line holds from Luis Baca (1806) upward, the family's American roots run to 1600 — twenty years before the Mayflower — braided with the Chavez, Pino, Sánchez and Romero families of the Rio Abajo. The NMGS's published Our Lady of Belen church books (baptisms 1810–1851, marriages 1826–1850) are where the oldest two links can be proven.
Rucker
Europe (origin unknown) → Virginia → Hot Spring Co., Arkansas → Texas
Peter Ruckerd. 1743 Orange Co., Virginia · the immigrant — origin unknown; “1661 Bavaria” is unproven tree romance
… four Virginia generations …Essex, Orange & Culpeper counties
James Pascal Rucker & Mary Susan Miller1824 Tennessee – 1907 Arkansas · m. June 29, 1846, Hot Spring Co. · 160-acre federal land grant, 1857
Isaac Cornelius Rucker & Nancy L. Stiles1850–1912, Hot Spring Co.
James Daniel Rucker & Cora Agnes Thomas1877–1967 · to Houston
Julias Edgar Rucker & Hazel Marie Holland1904–1986
Edna Marie Rucker1930–1984 · Jordan's grandmother
AUDITED, August 2026. Peter the immigrant is real — Essex County tithes by 1704, naturalized May 8, 1704 alongside nine Frenchmen, will proved February 1743/4 in Orange County — but the Rucker Family Society itself calls his birth “pure speculation” and his origin unknown; the Bavaria claim (and the medieval reaches above it) should be read as legend, like the 300-year-old story that he was shipwrecked and swam ashore. From James Pascal's 1846 Hot Spring County marriage down to Edna, every generation is now confirmed against independent records, mostly to the exact day — with the family's ground at New Hope Haven of Rest Cemetery, Rolla. The four Virginia generations between Peter and Tennessee still ride as-recorded.
Edward Durham1566–1642, Drax, Yorkshire · unproven graft — he died 54 years before Thomas was born
Thomas Durhamc. 1696 England – 1779 · Spotsylvania Co., Virginia; died Orange Co. (records say North Carolina) · compiled genealogy names his father John, not Edward
Joab Durham1756 Virginia – 1849 Georgia · family tradition puts him at Kings Mountain and Guilford Courthouse
John W. Durhamc. 1796 Georgia – 1864 Camden, Arkansas · the generation the tree skipped — restored August 2026
James Allen Durham1814 Pulaski Co., Georgia – 1899 Winn Parish · the tree's “Davis” came from his first wife, Elisor Crawford Davis
William Franklin Durham & Elvira Lee BradyElvira: 1861–1943 · her stone at Mars Hill Cemetery reads “DURHAM Elvira L. Brady, w/o W.F.”
Luella E. Durham & Henry Hall Brewster1881–1907, Sabine Parish
John Hamilton Brewster1903–1974
Dorothy Marie Brewsterb. 1932 · Jordan's grandmother
AUDITED, August 2026. The chain from Thomas (c. 1696, England → Virginia) down to Elvira at Mars Hill is corroborated by the compiled Durham genealogies once one missing generation (John W. Durham) is restored and “Davis” is read as a wife's maiden name. Everything above Thomas — including Edward of Drax — is unproven tradition: Durhams truly lived at Drax (an Edward Durham married there in 1630), but no document connects them to Virginia, and the surname arises independently wherever there's a place called Durham. Joab's Revolutionary service at Kings Mountain rides on consistent family tradition, not muster rolls.
Stebbins & Brooks
Essex, England → Massachusetts & New York
Rowland Stebbins & Sarah (Whiting)1592–1669/71 · sailed from Ipswich aboard the Francis, November 1634 — the documented immigrant
Aaron Stebbins & Mary (Wright)m. December 30, 1742, Springfield · Wilbraham, Massachusetts
Aaron Stebbins II1747–1819, Wilbraham · m. Esther Beebe
Ruth Beebe (Brooks)“1741–1828, Oneida Co., New York” — unproven; those exact dates belong to a Reuben Beebe
AUDITED, August 2026. The Stebbins backbone is among the best-documented lines in New England — Rowland arrived 1634, followed Pynchon up the Connecticut River to Springfield, and the Wilbraham Aarons check out name-for-name and date-for-date against the published 1904 Stebbins Genealogy (free on archive.org). The one weak plank is “Ruth Beebe (Brooks)”: structurally plausible as Esther Beebe's mother, but unverified, with a suspicious borrowed date-pair.
Lightfoot, Gallop & Moore
Colonial Virginia
John Lightfoot & Anne (Goodrich)New Kent Co.
Goodrich Lightfoot1682–1738 · sheriff, coroner and justice of Spotsylvania; his land became Orange, then Culpeper
Eleanor Gallop (Bryant)the real woman was a Virginia Northern Neck widow (d. c. 1756); the tree's “1720 Boston” death was her husband Robert's, in Virginia — the Boston graft is a known conflation
Nancy Wear (Moore)1740 Augusta Co. (later Rockbridge) – Oct 12, 1800, Cape Girardeau, then Spanish Upper Louisiana
AUDITED, August 2026. The Lightfoots are documented Virginia gentry, verified name-for-name: Council nominee John Lightfoot of New Kent (d. 1707) and his son Goodrich (1682–1738), the Spotsylvania sheriff — the dates match the tree exactly. The Gallop entry needed surgery, not deletion: keep the real Virginia widow Eleanor (Bryant), cut the Boston graft (and the invented “Powhatan ancestress” that rides with it in circulating trees). Nancy (Moore) Wear died three years before the Louisiana Purchase brought her grave back inside the United States.
Rich, Cornwallis & Garrard
Tudor England
Richard Rich & Elizabeth (Jenkes)London, 1500s
Mary Wroth (Rich)m. Sir Thomas Wroth (1516–1573) of Durants, Enfield — the tree's dates are HIS; hers are unrecorded
Affra Aucher (Cornwallis)1510 Suffolk – 1560 Kent · m. Sir Anthony Aucher
Sir William Gerrard & Isabel (Nethermill)1507–1571, London
Anne Barne (Gerrard)c. 1523 – 1611 · the Lord Mayor's only daughter; Woolwich was her married home, not her birthplace
AUDITED, August 2026 — and it passed. Every individual here is real, every marriage documented: Richard Rich IS the Tudor Lord Chancellor (wife Elizabeth Jenks, daughter Mary married to Sir Thomas Wroth exactly as recorded); Sir Anthony Aucher and Affra Cornwallis are correctly paired; Sir William Garrard IS the 1555 Lord Mayor. Better still, these five couples are not scattered gilded names — they are the published ancestry of ONE family, converging two generations later in the Lovelaces: Cavalier poet Richard, New York governor Francis, and Anne (Lovelace) Gorsuch, whose children resettled in Virginia and Maryland — a genuine, well-known gateway into colonial America. What still rides as-recorded is the colonial connective tissue between the Gorsuch immigrants and the family's proven ancestors.
The road here
Mexico City → New Mexico1600Baca — the documented origin
Fresno & San Joaquin, California1930s–1980sBaca · Button · Russell · Jones
Austin Hill CountrytodayLeander · Cedar Park · Georgetown
Can you help?
The answers to these live with this family — text Jordan.
Jennifer — Abby's full name, whenever you'd like: it gets her a proper card on this page.
The Parker cousins — Terry, Greg, and Randy, Melba's sons — hold the Rucker family papers. Randy found the letter to Grandma Edna in 2010; anything else in that box belongs on this page too.
The Baca side — when did Grandpa Thomas, Grandma Dorothy, and Aunt Linda pass? No public record we can reach has the dates; family memory is the only source left.
Photos, please! Every family card has an empty portrait circle waiting. Grandpa Button, the Bacas in Fresno, Harvey in his Rams uniform (#12), weddings, anyone and everyone — text them to Jordan and they go straight onto the page.
The 2010 letter to Grandma Edna from her own grandmother exists as two photo scans. Two family jobs: transcribe the handwriting, and find the original to photograph properly.
