EVANS, EVAN (1671 - 1721), cleric and missioner in Pennsylvania

Born at Carno, Montgomeryshire, in 1671. He graduated from Brasenose College, Oxford, in 1695 (M.A. and D.D. 1714). From 1696 till 1700 he was curate at Wrexham, but he went out to Pennsylvania, as rector of Christ Church, Philadelphia, in 1700. The most interesting feature of his work there is his vigorous Anglican mission-work among the Welsh Quakers in the colony; in 1706, a contemporary says that Evans had christened as many as 800 persons in Philadelphia, and the S.P.G. sent out Welsh -speaking clerics and schoolmasters to support him (three school-masters, e.g., in 1711). He held Anglican services in Radnorshire as early as 1701 (in a private house), and also in the Gwynedd district; churches were built in these places later. He died either in Maryland or at Philadelphia, 11 October 1721. An account of his work (including also accounts of his Welsh fellow-workers), based upon S.P.G. records, will be found in two articles by J. A. Thomas in the Journal of the Church in Wales Historical Society, 1954 and 1955. David Williams (Wales and America, Cardiff, 1946, 80-1) points out that Evan Evans's grandson, Oliver Evans, an inventor, was the first to build a steam-engine in the U.S.A.

Author

• Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, (1881 - 1969)

Published date: 1959

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