Stephan & Martha Jones House

Stephan Jones, one of the first three people to settle in Blue Island, arrived in 1836 and opened a wagon shop that he operated until his death in 1851. His shop stood at the bottom of the hill as the southernmost business in the new settlement, near Norman and Julia Rexford's Blue Island House, the first permanent structure built at the top of the hill at what is now the intersection of Western Avenue and Gregory Street. In 1841, his daughter Eda Ann Jones was born in this house, becoming the first female born to white settlers in Blue Island. The Jones family lived here until 1851, and in 1879 John and Henrietta Staffel bought the house and raised seven children here. John Staffel, an early member of Blue Island's village board, was also a wagon maker and repairman who started his own shop in the same building used by Stephan Jones that once stood at the corner of Western and Canal. The oldest part of the house still rests on its original 1840 sandstone foundation behind an elongated addition, and the home's original front entrance was at the east end of the narrow porch. It is the second-oldest remaining structure in Blue Island, after the Wilson/Cooley house at 2626 Vermont Street, built in 1838.

Blue Island, Illinois · United States