stone skipping across the water

I wish they’d a threw it in the New River sometimes

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Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

Twelve-year old William P. “Punch” Jones and his father, Grover C. Jones, Sr. were pitching horseshoes in Peterstown, WV one day in April 1928 when one of the shoes landed on an unusually beautiful stone. Believing the item to be simply a piece of shiny quartz common to the area, the family kept it in a wooden cigar box inside a tool shed for fourteen years, throughout the Depression. Punch Jones, meantime, worked his way through college during that time while his father struggled as a county school teacher to provide for his large family.

The Punch Jones Diamond was sold at auction in October 1984 through Sotheby’s of New York. It reportedly brought $67,500 from a buyer in the Orient.
The Punch Jones Diamond was sold at auction in October 1984 through Sotheby’s of New York. It reportedly brought $67,500 from a buyer in the Orient.

On May 5, 1943, Punch brought the stone to Dr. Roy J. Holden, a geology professor at Virginia Polytechnic Institute in nearby Blacksburg, Virginia. Holden, shocked at Punch’s discovery, authenticated the find as a diamond. The “Jones Diamond,” also known as the “Punch Jones Diamond,” “The Grover Jones Diamond,” or “The Horseshoe Diamond,” is an 34.48 carat alluvial diamond. It’s the largest alluvial diamond, and the third largest diamond overall, ever discovered in North America.

The bluish-white diamond measures 5/8 of an inch across and possesses 12 diamond-shaped faces. No other precious gems are known to have been found in West Virginia. Dr. Holden speculated that due to its “carry impact marks” and the size of the stone it had probably been washed down the New River into Rich Creek from a source in Virginia, North Carolina or Tennessee.

He sent it to the Smithsonian Institution, where it remained for many years for display and safekeeping. In February of 1964, the Jones family brought the diamond back and placed it in a safe deposit box in the First Valley National Bank in Rich Creek, Virginia.

When Grover died in 1976 his widow Grace and grandson Robert became owners of the diamond (Punch had been killed in World War II.) In 1984, Robert sold the diamond through Sotheby’s auction house in New York to an agent representing a lawyer in the Orient, for $74,250. “I wish they’d a threw it in the New River sometimes,” Grace Jones observed over all the controversy. She passed away in 1992.

Grover (left) and Annie (right) Jones' family in 1940.
Grover (left) and Annie (right) Jones’ family in 1940.

Sources:
http://www.radford.edu/jtso/GeologyofVirginia/Minerals/GeologyOfVAMinerals1-4l.html
Virginia Department of Mines, Minerals and Energy, Division of Mineral Resources. “Diamonds”
http://www.wvencyclopedia.org/articles/1049
http://www.wvculture.org/history/wvmemory/vets/joneswilliam/joneswilliam.html

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Swift’s Silver Mine – lost or merely invented?(Opens in a new browser tab)

5 comments

  1. I am the grandaughter of Dewey Amos Jones III. I have heard stories of this diamond from my mother Doris Jones who met Grace when she was a child. It is very interesting to finally be able to read more about my history after hearing stories as a child.

  2. I have heard this story all my life. I am the great niece of Punch Jones. The story we were told as children was that it was a cheese box, and that Punch never knew it was a diamond. He was gone to the war by the time his father found out it was a diamond. They used it as a door stop for a while, and that was when a professor visiting the house saw it and told them it might be a diamond.

  3. It’s hard to imagine how something only 5/8 of an inch could be used as a door stop. I think that’s a tidbit borrowed from the story of a large gold nugget found in NC or something like that. I have heard a story of a large piece of gold bearing quartz being used as a doorstop until a visitor told them what it was. Anyway, this is a great story. I am from West Virginia and my family is preparing to move back this year. I an on sharing this story with my kids and it will probably keep them busy hunting and collecting rocks for years to come!

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