Much of Southlake was named for John Dolford "Bob" Jones (1850-1936), a prosperous landowner in the Roanoke-Southlake area and a well respected rancher and family man. Jones was the son of an enslaved woman named Elizabeth (circa 1822-1879) and the white man who enslaved her, Leazer Alvis Jones (1822-1877). Leazer had five children with Elizabeth and seven children with his wife, Mary, who was white. In the 1870s, Bob Jones, his mother and his sisters are all listed by name - the first census to list all the African-Americans in the United States by name. Previouly, enslaved individuals were just counted as property with just their age and sex listed.
Bob was born before slavery was outlawed. Texas was a state that allowed slavery in the United States and it rebelled against the U.S. to join the Confederacy, in large part to preserve the ability to own other humans.
According to the Southlake Historical Society, there is a family story that has been passed down by the Jones family that Bob assisted enslaved people as they tried to flee from the United States to Mexico, where slavery was illegal. Rumor has it that refugees would hide in a cave about a mile from the Jones' home in the area. Bob would then feed them food, often biscuits, jam and vegetables. This story was kept secret for generations possibly because it was dangerous -- even many years later -- for white people to know that the Jones family had enabled "property" to escape. The cave still exists along the edge of Lake Grapevine. However, the cave is often filled with water and is on private property.
Eventually, Bob married Almeady Chisum Jones (1857-1949). Like Bob, she was born into slavery and was the daughter of a black woman and a white man. Together, they had ten children.
Today most of the original land owned by the Jones family is underwater in Lake Grapevine. It was taken in the 1940s by the Army Corps of Engineers as they dammed up many local rivers and creeks as a way to prevent catastrophic flooding during seasonal rains.