Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jones, Avonia
JONES, AVONIA (1839?–1867), actress, daughter of George, count Joannes, and his wife, Mrs. Melinda Jones, was born at 43 Barrow Street, subsequently Washington Place West, New York. Her first appearance on the stage took place in 1856 at Cincinnati, for the benefit of E. L. Davenport, when she appeared as Parthenia in ‘Ingomar.’ She visited England twice if not thrice between 1862 and 1867, and made her first appearance in London at Drury Lane as Medea in an adaptation from the French of M. Legouvé. She was then announced as from Australia. In 1862–3 she was at the Adelphi, where she took the character of Janet Pride in Boucicault's play of that name, and appeared in August 1862 as Adrienne Lecouvreur. At the Surrey in 1865 she played Lady Isabel in ‘East Lynne.’ Leah and the heroine of an adaptation of Charles Reade's ‘Griffith Gaunt’ were played by her in the course of an English engagement which included Manchester and other country towns. She was in Dublin in October 1866. In Manchester she appeared as Leah within three months of her death. She married Gustavus Vaughan Brooke [q. v.], whom she met at Drury Lane and probably in Australia. She died in New York on 6 Oct. 1867, and was buried in Mount Auburn cemetery, Boston. Pleasing in face and figure, she was a moderate and rather statuesque actress, with a musical voice and some tragic capacity marred by a tendency to declamation.
[Personal recollections; Literary Gazette for 1862–3; Morley's Journal of a London Playgoer; Era Almanack, various years; History of the Theatre Royal, Dublin; New York Clipper, 26 Oct. 1867, quoted in Era newspaper, 16 Nov. 1867; information supplied to the American press by her father.]