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Manuscript Group 47
SAMUEL EVANS COLLECTION
1752-1891
.1 cu. ft.


Letters and papers of Samuel Evans, who was born on January 20, 1823 in Donegal Township, Lancaster County, the son of Alexander Lowery Evans and Hannah (Slaymaker) Evans. Apprenticed to Columbia contractor Israel Cooper in 1838, Samuel Evans subsequently worked as a builder in New York, Pittsburgh, St. Louis, and New Orleans before returning to Columbia about 1850 where he settled into the building and lumber businesses. He first married Elizabeth Anderson of Marietta in 1852 who died in 1855. In 1857 he married Columbia school teacher and amateur poetess Mary Shoch. Evans was first elected as a Justice of the Peace for Columbia in 1853 and as Clerk of Quarter Sessions and Oyer and Terminer for Lancaster County in 1857. After the expiration of his term as Clerk, he was reelected Justice of the Peace in Columbia in 1861 but his term was interrupted by his service in the Union army during the Civil War. After Confederate forces fired on Fort Sumter, he enrolled as a Private in Colonel Fisher's Volunteer Company and marched to Camp Curtin on May 1, 1861. Promoted to the rank of Captain during the war, he was mustered out at Harrisburg in July, 1864. After the war, he was reelected as Justice of the Peace for Columbia in 1866 and served in that office continuously until 1900 when he became a Notary Public. Well known as a scholar of local history, Evans wrote numerous historical articles for the Columpia Spy and other local newspapers in Lancaster County and co-authored with Franklin Ellis The History of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania (Philadelphia, 1883).

Among the items present in this collection are genealogical materials on the Evans, Fall, Hughes, Lowery, Lykens, Slaymaker, and Watson families of Lancaster County including biographical sketches of Benjamin Loxley (b. 1720, d. 1801), Evan Evans (b. 1732, d. 1794), and James C. Watson (b. 1805, d. 1880), transcripts of deeds executed by members of the Evans family, two printed copies of "Extracts From Manuscript Memoir of Col Alexander Lowery, of Lancaster County, and Other 'Indian Traders' of His Day," and a list of teachers who served at the Donegal log schoolhouse between 1772 and 1812. Also present is a history of the settlement of Columbia, Pennsylvania attributed to "a highly respectable lady of the Society of Friends," since identified as Rhoda Barber of Columbia. This Columbia history, though lacking some of the details concerning the massacre of the Conestoga Indians given in Rhoda Barber's "Journal of the Settlement at Wright's Ferry" that resides at the Historical Society of Pennsylvania (Historical Society of Pennsylvania Manuscript Group 30, Rhoda Barber's Journal of Settlement at Wright's Ferry on Susquehanna River, 1830), this document nonetheless contains a number of other details about the town that were not yet fully developed in that earlier document. A copy of a letter from William Darlington dated January 13, 1887 contains genealogical information concerning the family of Thomas Cresap who was a passionate promoter of Maryland's interests in the Pennsylvania-Maryland border dispute that erupted into "Cresap's War" during the 1730s. Other correspondence include letters from:

Other items present are an undated constitution for the the "Scott and Graham Club" of Columbia that was formed during the early 19th century to disseminate Whig principles and elect a Whig to the presidency, a February 25, 1752 indenture binding Michael Neabling to eleven years and eleven months of indentured servitude to Joseph Shirk of Hempfield Township in consideration for money paid for the passage of Michael's father, John Neadling, miscellaneous Evans and Lowery account papers, and the record of a Lancaster County Orphan's Court session held on December 2, 1778.




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