This is a story I will tell from the bits and pieces I’ve gathered up from various sources, including accounts on the internet.

It seems there was a Jones family that lived in Oklahoma.

W.W. and Mandy Jones were both born in 1874 so they probably had been married for a while by 1914.

On the morning of June 1, 1914, they found a newborn baby girl at their door. They took that baby and raised her as their own. This baby was named Laura Mae.

Most likely the Jones Family was driven out of Oklahoma by drought and the dust bowl years. It appears they migrated to Live Oak County Texas, near Three Rivers where farming was on an upswing due to the fertile ground and the need for cotton.

Somewhere along the way Joseph Richard Sparks entered the picture. Being born in 1909, he would have been a young man in his 20’s. He and Laura Mae became aquatinted and she bore him a son, Joe Jr. in February, 1936.

Sometime after that, a move was made to Marble Falls, Texas. Cotton and farming was no longer profitable and many people headed to the lakes to work on the dams. Perhaps that’s what brought the Jones and Sparks families to this area. The Jones family also resided in Marble Falls.

Mr. and Mrs Jones, Joseph Sr. and Laura Mae Sparks and their son Joe Jr. all 5 are buried inside of curbed area in the Marble Falls City Cemetery.

It is believed that several Jones family members still reside in Marble Falls.

Much of this information came from the minister that presided over the burials of the Sparks Family.

There was never an admission by Mrs. Sparks that there was a loss of a baby that drives legend of her attending all the funerals. It is thought that she enjoyed the funeral and wedding atmosphere and the food, therefore her compulsion to attend every event she could possibly go to.

But if there is anyone that wants to stick with the legend of a baby’s funeral no one attended, there is this. In Live Oak County, Texas near Three Rivers there was a baby born and died in 1937. There is no accompanying information. So it is possible that this was “the baby” and she choose not to discuss it with her pastor.

A person can poke holes in my account of the Mrs. Sparks story, but my best guess is, it’s at least possible it happened this way. Sometime I may or someone else may follow the census reports and see if this theory is plausible.

The part about the baby left at the front door was used in her eulogy, I believe.