Edward D. "Ted" Jones

Who was Edward D. "Ted" Jones?

Edward D. "Ted" Jones built Edward Jones Investments's signature small town brokerage system, and devoted his last years along with his wife Pat Jones to establishing the Katy Trail State Park and the Prairie Fork Conservation Area in Missouri.

Jones was born in St. Louis, Missouri and studied agriculture at the University of Missouri. After World War II he returned to the University of Missouri and in 1947 worked as a page on the floor of the New York Stock Exchange. He worked for a year at Josephthal & Co.

He returned to St. Louis in 1948 to work for his father. He was to start the company's first one-person branch office in Mexico, Missouri. He was managing partner of the firm from 1968 to 1980 during which the firm expanded to 300 branch offices.

In the last 10 years of his life, he donated $2.2 million for Missouri to acquire property along 200 miles of abandoned Missouri-Kansas-Texas Railroad rail tracks to form a bicycle path for the Katy Trail State Park. The planned eastern terminus of the park is the confluence of the Missouri River and Mississippi River.