Origin of Name
Sometimes you just don’t know what you don’t know. If I were to guess, I would have guessed that “Evans” was a patronymic name. That is to say, it was derived from a personal name such as “son of Evan.” And I’d be right. What I wouldn’t have known is that it is a Welsh name.
Geographical
Today, the Evans name is the fifth most common name in Wales with one in 77 people having the surname.[i] Here in the United States, one in 47 people have the surname; worldwide there are about 795,000 people with the surname.[ii]
My Earliest Ancestors
1840 Distribution of the Evans surname in the US. Source: Ancestry.Com
My earliest known Evans ancestor is my 2nd great-grandmother, Malinda Evans. Malinda was born about 1828 in Ohio. According to Ancestry.Com, the 1840 Census reported there were 440 families in Ohio with the Evans surname. I haven’t had a chance to investigate Malinda’s life in depth yet, but she is number 4 on my Roberts-Barnes research list.
Malinda Evans (1828-c.1905) married Nimrod Lister (1824-?) in 1859.[iii] They had eight children, including my great-grandmother, Maranda (1867-1932).
Direct Evans Ancestors
- Hugh Eugene Roberts (1926-1997)
- Essie Pansy Barnes(1903-1982)
- Marada Mae Lister(1867-1932)
- Malinda Evens (c. 1828-c. 1905 ±4)
Known relatives.
My records have identified 94 direct-line descendants of Malinda.
I have two other Evans’ in my family tree; both of them are non-related spouses of other ancestors and have no common ancestor to Malinda.
ENDNOTES
[i] Internet: Forebears – Evans Name Distribution 2014 — https://forebears.io/surnames/evans#meaning
[ii] Ibid.
[iii] Wolfe, Thomas J., History of Sullivan County, Indiana, A, Files (Personal), Pages 234-236. A history of Sullivan County, Indiana, closing of the first century’s history of the county, and showing the growth of its people, institutions, industries and wealth. New York: The Lewis Pub. Co.
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