JONES, JIM. James Warren Jones (1931–1978), the charismatic leader of Peoples Temple who persuaded his followers to commit murder and suicide in Guyana in 1978, was born to James Thurman Jones and Lynetta Putnam Jones in Crete, Indiana, on May 13, 1931. Lynetta supported the family doing factory work in Lynn because the elder Jones suffered ill health resulting from injuries sustained in World War I. Although the family was irreligious, the younger Jones attended several local churches and by the age of ten was being groomed as a child evangelist by a female Pentecostal preacher.

As a high school student, Jones met Marceline Baldwin, a nursing student, at a hospital in Richmond where they both worked. They wed in 1949. After intermittently attending Indiana University and working at a series of jobs, Jones found himself drawn to the ministry, despite earlier expressions of atheism. He began an internship in 1952 at...