Born on February 28, 1808, in Brunswick, Maine (then still part of Massachusetts), Sybil Jones grew up in Augusta. She was reared in the Quaker religion. Her schooling ended with a year at the Friends Boarding School in Providence, Rhode Island, in 1824╨1825, after which she taught school until her marriage in June 1833 to Eli Jones, a distant relative and a Quaker preacher. They settled a short time later in Dirigo, Maine. Soon Sybil, who had earlier begun hesitantly to speak in meeting, was accepted as a minister on the strength of her increasingly eloquent and earnest preaching. In 1840, accompanied by her husband, she made a preaching and visiting tour of New Brunswick and Nova Scotia. In 1842 she visited meetings throughout New England, and in 1845 she traveled to all the yearly meetings in Ohio, Indiana, Maryland, and North Carolina.
Observing the plight of the African-American in the South, Jones began to brood upon that problem and eventually became convinced of a call to preach to the former slaves and African natives in Liberia. She and her husband sailed for Monrovia in July 1851 and preached for some months, returning in December. During 1852╨1854 they visited meetings in England, Ireland, Norway, Germany, France, and Switzerland. In 1860, after six years at home, Sybil Jones traveled to Indiana meetings and then again journeyed through the South. During the Civil War she visited military hospitals. In April 1867 she and her husband sailed to England, whence with two English Quakers they made their way through southern France and Greece to Syria and Palestine. Their visit was cut short by her ill health, but in 1869 they returned. She helped found the Friends Girls School in Ramallah, Palestine, and made a great impression on both the Moslems and on other missionaries working in the region, notably Theophilus Waldmeir. With her return home from that journey her evangelical missionary work, in which she had been a pioneer and moving spirit among Quakers, came to an end. She died in Dirigo, Maine, on December 4, 1873.
