Thomas Reynolds Evans
Thomas Reynolds Evans was born in Philadelphia on 7 October 1882, the son of Harry L. Evans and Annie E. Campbell. A younger brother, George Chapman Evans, was born and died in 1887. He carried the full name of his grandfather, Thomas Reynolds Evans, who rose from lamp maker and plumber to Special Deputy Surveyor of Customs at the Philadelphia Custom House.
His father died suddenly in December 1891, when Thomas was nine. His grandfather died sixteen months later. In February 1904, when Thomas was twenty one, his mother died at Hahnemann Hospital of burns after her clothing caught fire from a stove.
In 1910 he was twenty seven and single, living in the Fifteenth Ward with his uncle George W. Campbell, his mother's brother, and the Campbell family.
Thomas worked in Philadelphia as an electrotyper and as a clerk. An electrotyper made the metal printing plates that newspapers, magazines and book printers ran on their presses. A thin shell of copper was deposited on a wax mould of the set type, then backed with lead, and the finished plate could print far more copies than the type itself.
In October 1924, at forty one, he married Marion Elizabeth Haas in Philadelphia. She was twenty one, the daughter of Samuel J. Haas and Amelia Treude. The marriage was recorded on 3 October and celebrated on 4 October. Their only child, Virginia Laura Evans, was born in Philadelphia on 1 July 1925.
Thomas did not see her first birthday. He died at Lankenau Hospital in Philadelphia on 9 October 1925, two days after he turned forty three, when his daughter was three months old. He is buried in Lawnview Cemetery.
Twenty one years later, when Virginia applied to marry in November 1946, the clerk of the Orphans' Court wrote her father's name as Thomas Evans, born in Pennsylvania, and in the column for his residence wrote one word: "Dead".
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Cite: Heirology, "Thomas Reynolds Evans (1882-1925)", https://heirology.com/ancestors/thomas-reynolds-evans-1882-1925-791947.