HISTORY-MAKER: Frank B. Jones

BORN: Mar. 26, 1914 | DIED: Feb. 20, 1975

 If a picture is worth a thousand words, Frank Jones may be Forsyth County’s most prolific “author. ”

By the time he was hired as a photographer for the Winston-Salem Journal at the tender age of 23, he’d been working with cameras and developing his own film for 10 years. When he passed away, he willed his extensive collection of pictures to the Wachovia Historical Society so the community could enjoy them. The collection, which filled more than 100 boxes, contains not only his own work but images he gathered by other photographers—all of which help document the life and growth of Winston-Salem.

As the only child of salesman Frank Jones, Sr. and Carrie Keith, Franklin B. Jones, Jr., was born in his grandparents’ house on Brookstown Avenue.

Throughout his life, Jones never lived more than a few miles from the place he was born. He graduated from Reynolds High School in 1932 and worked at Barber Photo Supply until being hired by the Winston-Salem Journal and its sister paper, The Twin City Sentinel. In addition to taking
photos for the papers, Jones also penned a column called “Through the Lens,” which highlighted news related to photography and film. He spent the rest of his life working at the newspaper, passing at the age of 60 while on the job.

Jones didn’t just take pictures, he shared his experiences and knowledge with others liberally. He formed Winston-Salem’s first camera club in 1938 and later taught classes related to the profession and techniques. When the U.S. entered WWII, the military took full advantage of his camera skills, appointing him as a photographer with the Navy and asking him to make combat-training films.

Jones was acutely aware of the role photographs play in documenting the history of an area. He aggressively sought images that would tell the stories of his hometown—both the “important” and the mundane—and he never left home without at least one camera at hand. After his death, the Wachovia Historical Society placed his lifetime collection on permanent loan with the Forsyth County Library, where it’s now archived and displayed. Many of the collection’s 16,000 images can be viewed by visiting DigitalForsyth.or


 By Kate Rauhauser Smith