Bob Jones, Sr.

Robert Reynolds Jones, Sr. (October 30, 1883—January 16, 1968) was an American evangelist, pioneer religious broadcaster and the founder and first president of Bob Jones University. Bob Jones was the son of William Alexander and Georgia Creel Jones and the eleventh of twelve children. In 1883, when Bob was born, Alex Jones, a Confederate veteran, was working a small farm in Dale County, Alabama, but within months the family moved to Brannon Stand west of Dothan. All the unmarried Jones children helped work the farm there, and Bob Jones often sold the family vegetables door-to-door in Dothan. Jones later recalled, "We may have been a little undernourished, but we built some character." Jones's elementary schooling was sketchy by modern...