First child of Lewis Evans (1753 – 1827) and Ann NORMAN (1753 – 1788)

Born 1777, Ashby, Berkshire

Died 28th October 1818

Married Deborah MASCALL, daughter of John MASCALL, of Ashford, Kent. She died 1832 and was buried at St Mary de Lode, Gloucester.

Their children:

1) Thomas Simpson EVANS 1798-1880 married Jane MERRIMAN 1804-1897 They had eight children. He was Vicar of St Leonard’s, Shoreditch for nearly 40 years.

2) Aspasia EVANS 1799-1876

3) Herbert Norman EVANS 1802-1877 married Mary Elizabeth HAINES 1811-1898 and had 15 children

4) Arthur Benoni EVANS 1813-1838 married Catherine PATTESON ???-1838

5) Lewis EVANS (Rev.) 1815-1869 married Isabella Julia WILKINSON ???-1905 They had four children. He was headmaster of the Grammar School, Sandbach.

He was named Thomas Simpson in honour of the mathematician of that name whose work on Fluxions his father particularly admired.

See Simpson’s rule and Thomas Simpson

In or about 1797 Evans appears to have taken charge of a private observatory at Blackheath belonging to William Larkins, formerly accountant-general to the East India Company in Bengal. After the death of Larkins, 24 April 1800, he was taken on as an assistant by Nevil Maskelyne at the Royal Observatory, Greenwich, but resigned the post in 1805.

In that year, or perhaps in 1803, Evans was appointed mathematical master under his father at the Royal Military Academy, Woolwich. Here he continued until 1810, when he accepted the mastership of the mathematical school at New Charlton, near Woolwich, which office he vacated in 1813 to become master of the mathematics at Christ's Hospital, London. His attainments won for him the degree of LL.D. (from what university is not known) and the fellowship of the Linnean Society.

At one time he had a house in Kensington Square, no. 31, where he had moved into on his marriage to Deborah MASCALL

Works

Evans left a completed translation of Antonio Cagnoli's ‘Trigonometria piana e sferica’ besides other translations of scientific works and a collection of unfinished papers in several branches of philosophy.

He also contributed some articles to the Philosophical Magazine, among which were:

"Problems on the Reduction of Angles" (vol. xxviii.);

"An Abridgment of the Life of Julien Le Roy, the Watchmaker, by his Son" (vol. xxxi.);

"A Short Account of Improvements gradually made in determining the Astronomic Refraction" (vol. xxxvi.);

"Historical Memoranda respecting Experiments intended to ascertain the Calorific Powers of the different Prismatic Rays" (vol. xlv.);

"On the Laws of Terrestrial Magnetism in different Latitudes" (vol. xlix.).

Evans's library was considered a valuable collection of mathematical and philosophical works.

See also Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Evans, Thomas Simpson