The Road to Jonestown

by Jeff Guinn

  Lynetta’s father had died; she never elaborated on the specific cause or date of his demise. Her mother, Mary, lived with Lynetta during her marriage to Cecil Dickson. But not long after Lynetta divorced her second husband and struck out on her own, Mary Putnam became ill, probably with tuberculosis, and died in December 1925.

  A year later, Lynetta married again. Her approach to this third marriage was pragmatic. Though she yearned to be a great lady, she was currently working for a company in Evansville, Indiana. Typically, Lynetta later bragged that “I started as a secretary and in one year I [became] a top aide,” but the reality was that she found herself stuck in another poorly paying, dead-end job. Her health was suffering, too. She later admitted to “some kind of a lung condition.” Historian Joyce Overman Bowman has found evidence that Lynetta was treated, probably for tuberculosis, in an Illinois sanitarium. Lynetta wanted security, a life of sufficient ease wherein she could exercise her great intellectual and spiritual gifts and realize her full potential. The obvious solution was marrying well, choosing a man with a family fortune that would allow her to live in a gracious rather than a bare subsistence manner. Sometime in 1926, Lynetta believed that she’d found him.

  * * *

  John Henry Jones was prominent in Randolph County, Indiana, both for his extensive farmland holdings and his politics. He proudly proclaimed himself a Democrat in a region where virtually everyone else was fervently Republican. John Henry, a devout Quaker, presided over a large family; his two marriages produced thirteen children. Their father expected them to make something of themselves, and most did. The majority, daughters as well as sons, graduated from college—John Henry sold off spare acreage to pay their tuition. As adults, several settled into the same area where they’d grown up. Randolph County was tucked near the Ohio border. Jones offspring worked in managerial capacities for the railroad, farmed, taught school, or else owned and operated local businesses (a filling station and beer garden among them). One ran the county home for orphan children. In only two cases did they fail to flourish. Billy took up with a bad crowd, and fell prey to drinking and gambling. His father mourned such dissolute ways but didn’t disown him. And then there was Jim, born in October 1887 and christened James Thurman Jones, who went off to war and returned a physical wreck.

  Practically from birth, Jim disappointed his demanding father. Though a nice enough boy, he had no real ambition. He got a basic grade school education but wasn’t interested in higher education. Like his father and brothers, Jim was handy with tools and every kind of machinery, so he ended up working on road crews around the state. Because automobiles were beginning to proliferate, there was always plenty of work. It was steady, if unexciting, employment, which suited easygoing Jim exactly.

  It was surprising that Jim didn’t marry. Most of his Randolph County contemporaries paired off early, often in high school, and started families. But he didn’t, perhaps because he had the same lack of ambition in romance as in the rest of life. Jim was thirty the first time that he ever showed gumption in any form. When America entered World War I, he enlisted in the army and was sent to fight on the front lines in France. There he was caught in a German gas attack; the insidious vapors burned deep in his lungs. Jim was shipped home, a shadow of his former self. It was difficult for him to catch a full breath, and his respiratory system continued deteriorating for the rest of his life. Jim’s voice was reduced to a raspy croak. He didn’t talk much and was hard to understand when he did.

  As a disabled veteran and one of about seventy thousand Americans victimized by gas in World War I, Jim was eligible for a military pension, though it probably amounted to no more than $30 a month. That wasn’t enough to live on, so back in civilian life Jim returned to work on road crews. He wasn’t able to handle much physical labor anymore, though he did his best. He also developed rheumatism and had to periodically take time off. Single, in constant discomfort, and rapidly approaching middle age, Jim led a lonely life. Then, while working with a road crew around Evansville, he met an outgoing woman named Lynette, though she also called herself Lynetta. She was either fifteen or seventeen years younger than Jim. To the astonishment of the groom’s family, who assumed Jim to be a lifelong bachelor, they married on December 20, 1926, almost a year to the day after the death of the bride’s mother.

  Though she was now saddled with a disabled husband nearly old enough to be her father, Lynetta was still pleased to have married into a prominent family. She expected that she would now assume a more appropriate, even pampered, position in life.

  She was mistaken.

  * * *

  The newlyweds needed a place to live, and Lynetta’s new father-in-law gave them one, making a down payment on a small farm in Crete, a short distance north of Lynn, where most of the Jones family lived. But John Henry Jones didn’t provide anything beyond that, though he had the financial wherewithal to give them the land outright. Thanks to him, his son and daughter-in-law now had property and the opportunity to make something of it. The rest was up to them.

  They floundered from the start. There were corn and soybeans to plant and tend, and hogs to raise, slaughter, and sell. Despite her claims of a childhood spent tramping the woods and trapping animals, Lynetta in fact had no experience in any type of animal husbandry, let alone the knowledge of how to plow furrows or care for, then harvest, crops. Her husband, Jim, was more familiar with the daily demands of farming, but he often wasn’t on the property. Money was needed for seed and tools and animal feed, so he worked on road crews around the state from time to time. That kept Jim away for days or even weeks at a time, leaving Lynetta on her own. Her work would have been easier with the newfangled farm machinery, but she and Jim couldn’t afford any.

  When Jim was home and tried pitching in on the endless chores, he tired quickly and had to sit down or even take to his bed. Lynetta couldn’t have any extended conversations with her husband. His respiratory problems precluded that. In another location she might have turned to neighbors for socializing, but there weren’t many. Crete was a collection of a half dozen farms and a grain elevator. Its population was twenty-eight. Four times a day, trains passed through, two whizzing by nonstop with passengers and the other pair pausing to load grain brought daily to the elevator by area farmers. In local parlance, this made Crete not a village but a “stop place.” The cargo trains also hauled coal, and as soon as they pulled away Crete’s residents stopped whatever they were doing and hustled to the tracks, picking up any chunks that had fallen off the cars. Even though Lynn, with its shops and grocery stores, was nearby, everyone in Crete did their best to live off the land, raising their own food and supplementing diets by picking the strawberries and raspberries that grew wild near the tracks. They called it “living smart.” Jim couldn’t pick berries and Lynetta, worn down herself, usually wouldn’t. Their meals were sparse and unappealing. Anything beyond basic cooking required energy and commitment she didn’t have. The other few families in Crete felt sorry for them—Jim was a disabled war veteran, after all—but they had all they could do fending for themselves. Everybody was wary of Lynetta, who defied local custom for women by smoking in public, instead of privately in her house. She also cursed when she felt like it, no matter who was in earshot. Lynetta enjoyed the resulting stares. If she couldn’t be happy, at least she could be different.

  At weekend gatherings of the Jones clan in Lynn, instead of enjoying these opportunities to socialize, Lynetta saw women with nice houses and fine things and burned with resentment. She hated her life on the Crete farm, and yearned for “much more lucrative ways to meet the tremendously high goals I [had] set.”

  Bad as things were in the beginning, over the next few years they grew worse. Jim’s health continued deteriorating. He had to give up working on road crews, so the Jones family income dropped accordingly. Jim couldn’t do much to assist Lynetta with the farm, and what he did try to do often wasn’t helpful. If Lynetta had any previous respect for her husband, she lost it n
ow: “The man [knew] nothing about stock raising or farming.” They couldn’t afford seed, let alone hired help. Bills piled up. Meeting the mortgage was a monthly challenge. She would have been glad to escape what she thought of as “a type of slavery,” but had nowhere to go.

  On the farm, at least, there was food, but unless some miracle occurred, Lynetta and Jim would not have the farm much longer. The most obvious source of financial rescue remained John Henry, her father-in-law. He’d suffered his own Depression-related financial reverses and now lived part of the time with a son’s family in Lynn, and other times on his remaining acreage in Crete. But he was still reasonably well off, and so were most of the other Joneses. Maybe they’d take in Jim if the farm was lost, but for all Lynetta knew, they’d gladly see her homeless and in a bread line. She felt certain that they disliked her, which wasn’t true. Lynetta’s quirky personality could be off-putting, but most of her in-laws admired her spunk. Letting Lynetta and Jim struggle to make it on their own was a sign of respect. She didn’t see that, and believed something needed to be done to win their sympathy, to make them more inclined to help.

  Lynetta had absolutely no natural maternal instincts. She’d never wanted or intended to become a mother. Later, she would weave a tale of becoming ill and falling into a fevered vision of approaching “the Egyptian river of death.” As Lynetta was about to cross, perishing in the process, the spirit of her mother appeared and told her that she could not die, because it was her destiny to give birth to a child who would become a great man.

  Whether it was due to destiny or desperation, in the fall of 1930 Lynetta announced that she was pregnant. She gave birth in the Crete farmhouse on May 13, 1931, to James Warren Jones. But besides saddling Lynetta with even more responsibility, the arrival of the child changed nothing.

  Jim, the baby’s father, never articulated the frustration he surely felt from his escalating physical problems to an unhappy wife who was constantly critical of him and the rest of his family. But soon after the child’s birth Jim snapped from the stress, suffering a complete breakdown that required months of hospitalization in nearby Oxford, Ohio. An attending physician described Jim as “nervous, emotional, irritable; nervous system & general physical condition below par.” Even after being sent home, Jim required periodic return visits and treatment. He couldn’t focus on the problems that his wife had no choice but to face, in particular keeping ownership of their property. Lynetta was unsympathetic—what kind of man surrendered to the heebie-jeebies? Later in Jonestown she would scornfully write, “My husband having cried tears of disappointment was resigned to letting the mortgager take the farm.”

  Lynetta recounted a confrontation in 1934 between herself and a representative of the bank, whom she said was ordered to throw her family out of their house and off their land. In her tale, she refused to leave until guaranteed a house in Lynn: “I intend to have a roof over my child’s head come hell or high water. . . . [Tell your boss] I don’t know how to play the role of ‘worm’ and I’m not fixing to learn.” The reality was that the other Joneses stepped in. A house, not fancy but perfectly adequate, was found in Lynn for Jim, Lynetta, and Jimmy Warren, as the family called the youngster. It was on Grant Street, where two of Jim’s brothers already lived. Jim’s army pension would have to be put toward rent, and also whatever occasional wage he might earn should his health permit a return to work. His father and brothers would assume the remaining financial responsibility. That was fine with Lynetta, but then the Joneses set out what they expected of her. While her son was a toddler, she could stay home and raise him. But once the child started school, Lynetta’s in-laws would continue helping out financially only if she found a job and earned the bulk of the necessary household income.

  She had no choice. Jim, Lynetta, and Jimmy Warren moved to Lynn.

  CHAPTER TWO

  LYNN

  Lynn, Indiana, was a crossroads town. State roads 27 and 36 intersected there, and the New York Central and Pennsylvania railroads passed through. Most of its 950 or so residents were part of families that had lived in or around Randolph County for generations. Everybody knew everyone else. It was virtually impossible to keep secrets. Living there involved an unspoken but understood obligation to fit in. Conformity was the bedrock of good citizenship. In part, Lynn existed to serve the needs of the farmers whose acreage ringed the town. Country folk came in on Saturdays to trade goods—milk, butter, eggs, fresh beef, and poultry—for things they couldn’t grow or make themselves. Lynn offered them the services of a doctor, dentist, and veterinarian, who were often paid in chickens or homemade pies.

  There were a few grocery stores in Lynn, as well as a barber shop, a café or two, a drugstore, a daily newspaper, a pool room, and several churches, which reflected the integral role religion played. As in the rest of the traditionally conservative state, evangelical Protestantism reigned. Lynn had small Methodist, Disciples of Christ, Nazarene, and Quaker churches, but not a Catholic one. If any Catholics lived in Lynn, they kept their faith quiet and went to mass somewhere else.

  Lynn was a friendly place. People living there worked hard to keep it that way. Those who were better off didn’t flaunt it. Everyone dressed the same, clean clothes but nothing fancy. Parents kept an eye on their own kids and everybody else’s. No one locked their doors when they went out, secure in the knowledge that nobody from Lynn would steal, and that their neighbors would be on the lookout for any suspicious strangers. There was a comforting sense of shared schedules—on Wednesday nights in nice weather, everyone gathered downtown to watch free movies shown on a sheet tacked up on the side of a building. Westerns, with their inevitable good-guys-whip-the-bad-guys plots, were always most popular.

  Saturdays were shopping days. Sundays meant church. Everybody in town went. There were no rivalries between preachers or congregations. Often on major holidays, Lynn ministers would combine their flocks for collaborative services. Every Friday during the last class period, Lynn high schoolers gathered in the gym, where town preachers took turns giving hour-long talks on living right and growing up clean.

  Men in Lynn had social clubs—the Odd Fellows and the Red Men’s lodges were popular, and in the 1930s the Masons were the most prominent, though in the 1910s and 1920s the Ku Klux Klan was foremost. The power base of the Klan had drifted north into Indiana and became the largest organization of any kind in the state. In a single year, from July 1922 to 1923, its registered Indiana membership ballooned from 445 to almost 118,000. Unlike its focus in the South, the Klan in Indiana spent little time promoting racial hatred. There weren’t enough black people in Indiana (less than 3 percent of the state population) to make that paramount, though maintaining white supremacy and racial purity was always part of any Klan agenda. Instead, the Indiana Klan stressed better public education and Prohibition, both issues that played well throughout the state, particularly in rural areas. Klan leaders cannily insinuated their group into small towns by sponsoring community picnics and parades, paying for everything and leaving the impression that they, too, were decent people with similar conservative Christian values.

  Prohibition in America, mandated by the Eighteenth Amendment in 1920, was repealed in 1933, but that made no difference in Randolph County or Lynn, which remained proudly dry. Lynn preachers thundered against liquor; in such a small, insular place, it was impossible to sneak a drink without everyone else finding out. Even getting that liquor would have involved taking the bus across state lines into Ohio. The few bootleggers in the area knew better than to ply their wares around Lynn. The town pool hall, considered sinful by some because of the “dime bet” card games played there, did not serve alcohol. To this day, locals apologize for liquor stores in nearby towns. They feel tainted even by proximity.

  Lynn’s public school stood out, in the best way possible. For decades, rural children in Indiana received minimal education in one-room schoolhouses, with students of all ages lumped together and often instructed by teachers who had never gradua
ted from high school themselves. But around 1910, Randolph County hired Dr. Lee Driver to restructure its public school system. Driver was a dynamo who consolidated all the one-room classrooms into full-fledged town schools, including one in Lynn. Transportation was provided. Instead of walking long distances to and from school, farm kids were picked up and brought home by buses—for the first time, they attended regularly. Driver insisted on structured curriculum, and used grant money to hire qualified teachers. High school graduation rates soon skyrocketed by 70 percent, and these kids actually learned enough to qualify for good jobs or even admission to college. Driver was eventually hired away by Pennsylvania to work the same miracles for its public schools; by then, the reputation of Randolph County schools was such that delegations from Canada and China as well as other U.S. states came to study its school system, and adapt its programs to their own. Students in Randolph County were fortunate, especially in Lynn, where courses were available in foreign languages (including Latin), advanced mathematics, and science. For the first time in memory, Lynn Bulldogs had potential career options beyond farming or factory work. Some went on to become architects, doctors, or even educators themselves.