Jonesville, North Carolina

Jonesville is the oldest town in Yadkin County. It began as Allen's Settlement, named for David Allen and his son who ran a bloomery forge on Big Elkin Creek. In eighteen eleven it was incorporated under the name Martinsborough, and four years later renamed Jonesville in honor of a local citizen, Hardy Jones, a Revolutionary War veteran who helped bring the Jonesville Male and Female Academy to town.

The town sits on the south bank of the Yadkin River, where the foothills of the Blue Ridge flatten into the Carolina Piedmont, and it served for decades as a small commercial hub for the farms and homesteads along the river. Yadkin County itself was not formed until eighteen fifty, carved from Surry County to the north. Jonesville predates the county that surrounds it by nearly four decades, making it one of those Piedmont towns that outlasted the administrative boundaries it was born into.