Willie Jones (25 May 1741-18 June 1801) was a planter and politician from Halifax County. His father Robert "Robin" Jones Jr. had been the attorney general of North Carolina and a land agent for John Carteret, 2nd Earl of Granville and Willie used this influence to attract wealth and recognition for himself. After representing Halifax in the North Carolina Colonial Assembly and serving under Governor William Tryon at the Battle of Alamance, Jones became a leader of the pro-independence movement in the state, representing Halifax in the provincial congress (1774-1775) and in both the North Carolina General Assembly (1777-1782, 1784, 1788) and the Council of State (1781, 1787). In 1777 Thomas Harrison testified that Daniel Leggett suspected that Willie Jones was part of a conspiracy to undermine Protestantism and introduce Catholicism in North Carolina and therefore that Jones was marked as an enemy by members of the Gourd Patch Conspiracy. While there is no evidence that Jones wanted to promote Catholicism as they claimed, he specifically requested that a priest not attend his funeral and did not mention religion in is will, which was atypical for the period and indicates he was likely a deist, something the Gourd Patch Conspirators would have found alarming.