Jón Árnason was born on January 4, 1868 in Strandasýsla.
Unmarried and childless.
Jón was the son of Árni Jónsson who came west in 1900. His mother was Guðrún Guðmundsdóttir from Kirkjuból in Staðarsveit. Árni came west in 1900 with his wife, Valgerður Einarsdóttir, and Jón’s half-siblings. It is not clear what year Jón came west, but he probably came in 1890, the same year as his mother and father. In his memoirs published in the Almanak in 1927, Árni describes his voyage west across the ocean, accompanied by Jón’s mother Guðrún and her husband Sigurður Jónsson who died of pneumonia on the way across the ocean. It seems that Árni then took care of the widow, Jón’s mother, after arriving in Winnipeg. Árni writes: “On the 16th of July I went to work for Hugh Hamilton to renovate a house we were to rent for two months, and I was to stay with him for a while. It was raining heavily in the evening. On the 17th and 18th of July I was taken to the house with my mother Gudrun.” Nowhere in the story is there any evidence that the father and son had any relationship in the West.