Enjoy some photos from the Cowls Photo Album ...
Jonathan Cowls b. 1781 son of David, father of Jonathan 1822
Jonathan Cowls was born in the family homestead at 134 Montague Road, was a farmer, a selectman, member of the North Church, and on a 1828 committee that divided Shutesbury from Amherst.
Jonathan Cowls b. 1822, died 1902 father of W.D. Cowls
Jonathan Cowls was born. He succeeded his father at the Cowls family farm and homestead at 134 Montague Road and later became a Selectman.
Walter Dickinson Cowls - b. July 5 1852
In 1898, Walter Dickinson Cowls expanded the home farm house from a saltbox to a colonial with an ell. He helped build the North Amherst Library. WD Cowls grew the family’s land base and is the namesake for the Cowls land company today. WD Cowls was actively engaged in the lumber and the onion business. As a partner in Cowls & Childs, his contracting business built roads, and undertook large construction projects including developing the Amherst and Sunderland Street Railway System. WD built a massive rock crushing facility on the Notch in Amherst to crush stone for trolley beds and sawed timbers for tracks. WD was a Selectman and served as a State Representative.
1887 - Sarah Cowls Jones
Sarah Cowls, WD’s only child, was born. She was a cattle farmer who also bred sheep, pigs, chickens, dogs, and peacocks at the 134 Montague Road farm. Sarah grew onions, corn, tobacco, and potatoes and her dairy herd produced 40 gallon metal cans of milk at 134 Montague Road. Sarah met husband, Gerald Jones, when he worked for her father’s lumber business while a student at Massachusetts Agricultural College. Gerald Jones was an Amherst Selectman and a State Representative.
Receipt from 1892
1900 - Cowls loggers
1909 Walter Cowls Jones, the only child of Sarah and Gerald Jones, was born. He ran the family farm that stretched from Montague Road to the Hadley town border. Walter was a significant buyer, seller and developer of real estate. In the 1950s he developed the 41 acre Harlow Farm into Grandview Heights in Amherst. Walter Jones is credited with building the first electric sawmill, perhaps in the country, when he centralized formerly woods- based operations by opening a central milling facility on Cowls Road in North Amherst c. 1940. Walter was the Amherst Water Commissioner when this was a private company; a founding member of the Amherst Housing Authority; was active in housing returning veterans from WWII; and was chairman of the Planning Board. Walter Jones was a partner in Elder Jones Lumber. Walter and wife Sarah Hartman Jones had three children, Denison,
Paul, and Gertrude.
Gerald Dennison Jones
1912 - Cowls first motorized vehicle
1936 - Horse drawn logging days
Paul and Gert Jones
1968 Paul Jones ran the family sawmill/timberland enterprise from a home farm office at 134 Montague Road. He built the Riverside Park Apartment and Store complex in 1970 and then Cowls Building Supply in 1980. He and partner Bob Patterson developed a number of residential subdivisions through the 1980s and 90s.
1986 Gertrude (Jones) Wegel Como returned home to Amherst with her family and today serves as president of Cowls Building Supply. Her three boys, Adam, Gabe, and Donald, grew up in Amherst and are now engineers in California, eastern MA and Maryland.Timber delivery, 1936
1978 - Old cowls ad
2005 - Evan and Cinda Jones
Today’s generation of the Cowls family started with Gerald Lewis Jones, who took over his father’s real estate business and has grown what’s now known as Jones Group Realtors to be the largest independently owned real estate company in western MA. Denny’s daughter, Wendy with his younger son Andrew, manage the operations of the family’s Jones Properties and Denison Corporation which are residential and commercial leasing businesses.