Rosa Kinckle Jones
*The birth of Rosa Kinckle Jones is celebrated on this date in 1858. She was a Black music teacher.
Rosa Daniel Kinckle was born in Lynchburg, Virginia to free black parents. Jones attended the public school of that city until 1877, when she left for Howard University, from which she graduated with honors in 1880. She devoted the first years of her public services to teaching, having taught with great success in the State of Virginia and city of Lynchburg for two years. Along with her sister, Alice Walker Kinckle, she was one of the first African American teachers in Lynchburg Public Schools.
In 1882, she married Rev. Dr. Joseph Endom Jones, of the Richmond Theological Seminary in a double wedding, the other couple being her sister Alice Walker Kinckle and Jones's best friend and fellow professor, David Nathaniel Vassar. The family had two sons, Henry Endom Jones and Eugene Kinckle Jones. Jones was well-read and cultured, having "a voice of unusual compass" and was an excellent teacher of vocal music; but it is as a pianist that she was especially distinguished.
Jones was possessed of natural ability in the musical line, but in addition to this, she had excellent instruction from competent teachers from early childhood, continuing the study in the city of Washington, D.C., finally taking a course in harmony at the New England Conservatory of Music. She was considered one of its most prominent, if not the most prominent and successful teacher of music in the Richmond area.
For almost 40 years, she was a highly accomplished teacher at the Hartshorn Memorial College as well as a private instructor. She retired in 1928. Outside of her work at Hartshorn, Jones was the president of the Maggie Walker's Woman's Union Beneficial Department which was committed to "financial protection and opportunities for women and their families." She remained active however, accompanying her son and daughter-in-law on a trip to Europe in 1928. She was one of the first 10 women who graduated from the Normal School of Howard University, and as being one of only two African American faculty members she headed Hartshorn Memorial College's music department. Rosa Kinckle Jones died in 1932.
