Rosa Kinckle Jones
*The birth of Rosa Kinckle Jones is marked 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 that city's public school 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 successfully taught in the State of Virginia and the 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 vocal music teacher, but it is as a pianist that she was especially distinguished.
Jones possessed natural ability in the musical line. Still, in addition to this, she had excellent instruction from competent teachers from early childhood, continuing her study in the city of Washington, D.C., and 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 music teachers in the Richmond area.
For almost 40 years, she was a highly accomplished teacher at Hartshorn Memorial College and 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 among the first ten women who graduated from the Normal School of Howard University. She headed Hartshorn Memorial College's music department as one of only two African American faculty members. Rosa Kinckle Jones died in 1932.
