acres, and the patriarch built a spacious brick house with ten rooms to accommodate his large family. According to one biographer, this house was "the finest outside of Nashville." Later in life, Jesse recollected that the family farm was bountiful, providing enough meat and produce to leave a surplus through all seasons. They even shared food with less fortunate neighbors who struggled during the winter months, Jones recalled. Jesse had been a diligent worker as a boy, caring for the farm animals, and performing many common household chores. During the summers when his family had lived in Dallaswhen he was a young teenagerhe hacked out weeds, picked cotton, and herded cattle. He did not display the same diligence for school, and later, Jesse recalled many scoldings and punishments from his teachers. His father challenged his two sons with a tobacco plot for each of them. He allotted three acres to each son and provided them both with supplies. Each of them would be allowed to keep any profits after they repaid their store accounts. He applied this experience to a job in the tobacco industry when he quit school after the eighth grade. William Jones not only grew tobacco, but also traded the crop, and he also joined a partnership, Jones, Holman and Armstrong, which processed tobacco. William put Jesse in charge of one of the tobacco factories. He was responsible for receiving (or sometimes rejecting), classifying, warehousing, and shipping tobacco. In addition, his name was on the company bank account, and he signed checks for the company's operations. At the age of seventeen, Jesse and his family returned to Dallas. After several attempts to find a suitable job in Dallas and the surrounding region, Jesse started working in Hillsboro, Texas, at one of his uncle's lumberyards. He performed manual labor, but also served the office side of the business, such as bookkeeping and debt collection. Despite these varied duties, he earned the standard salary for a salesman: $40 per month. He requested a fifty percent raise, arguing that he worked day and night. His uncle refused. Jesse quit not long before the death of his father, William Jones. The will instructed that trustees manage the tobacco enterprise, while Jesse would assume control at age twenty-one. He also inherited about $2,000 in stock. Business activities Timber and lumber Jesse and his brother liquidated the tobacco inventory from their father's estate