Had Gouverneur Morris, the American Minister to France, done his duty at the time of Paul Jones’s death, by giving him a respectable funeral and a modest tombstone, the people of this country would not now be taxed $35,000 to find the hero’s grave.
When John Paul Jones—old, broken and poor—lay dying in Paris, our high-toned Minister to France, Gouverneur Morris, sat feasting with aristocratic company, and that high-toned Minister failed to mark the grave of a man who with Nelson’s chances might have done even more than Nelson on the sea.
His grave was made in an obscure churchyard, his resting-place neglected and forgotten, covered with accumulated deposits, and built over with houses.
Those who seek the bones are sinking holes seventeen feet deep, in the search.
Of course, they will find the body of Commodore Jones. That is what they are hunting for. Therefore, they will find it.
But whether the dust they bring back to America will be that of our Paul Jones no mortal will ever know.
In his Diary, Gouverneur Morris relates: