Evans, Evan (1), D.D.
a minister of the Church of England, is supposed to have been a native of Wales. He was sent to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, by the bishop of London, in 1700. Five years before, a church had been built there, and of this he took charge. Through his instrumentality churches were formed at Chichester, Chester, Maidenhead, Concord, Evesham, Montgomery, Radnor, and Oxford, places all within a radius of forty miles. After four years of service at Philadelphia, he asked for and received an assistant. In 1707 he visited England, and urged that a bishop should be sent over to the colonies. In 1709 he returned to his charge in Philadelphia, and in 1711 it was found necessary to enlarge the church edifice. Resigning, he again visited England in 1716, and on his return to America accepted an appointment to Oxford and Radnor, a part of his former field, and remained there until 1718, when he resigned his mission, removed to Maryland, to St. George's parish, then in Baltimore, now Harford, County, and on every alternate Sabbath officiated in the adjoining parish, over twenty miles distant. He died in October 1721. See Sprague, Annals of the Amer. Pulpit, 5:22.