EVANS, EDWIN (1834-1913)

EVANS, EDWIN, Methodist minister, Miramichi circuit, 1866-70; b. Yorkshire, England, 8 Mar 1834; m. 1st, 1864, Margaret Greig, of Dartmouth, N.S., and 2nd, 1872, Martha E. Johnson, of Charlottetown; d. Hampton, N.B., 7 Feb 1913.

Edwin Evans was a local Methodist preacher in England until his emigration in 1860. He entered the regular ministry at Halifax that year on probation and was ordained in 1864. He arrived on the Miramichi two years later, after the circuit had been supplied for a year by the Rev. Frederick W. Moore, who soon left the ministry due to ill health. Evans was personally respected in Chatham and was assisted at Newcastle, where a new church was opened in 1866, by exceptionally popular and able probationers: Arthur D. Morton (1866-68) and Charles H. Paisley (1868-70). Morton later had a successful ministry in Nova Scotia and Newfoundland, while Paisley followed a scholarly path which led him to the deanship in theology at Mount Allison University.

Before Evans left the Miramichi in 1870 for Cornwall, P.E.I., he was given an address by a body of well-wishers from different religious denominations. He later ministered in Saint John, Fredericton, and elsewhere, before retiring at Hampton in 1891. He was a longtime member of the Mount Allison board of regents and was granted an honorary DD by the university in 1893.

There were two children born of Evans's marriage to Margaret Greig and four of his marriage to Martha E. Johnson. The former included Edwin G. Evans, a civil engineer who helped survey the railway line between Fredericton and Chatham in the 1880s, and the latter, W. Benton Evans, a Queens County businessman and MLA.