Charles Evans of Compton

Charles Evans was born in 1773 the second eldest son of John Evans, the innkeeper of the Old Bell Inn. He was baptized in St Peter’s Collegiate Church in Wolverhampton on 27 November 1773.

His father died when he was aged 11 and his mother, Mary, when he was 19.

He married into the wealthy Marsh family of the Lloyd when he married Ann Sophia Marsh on 3 Jan 1804 in Penn. It is probable that he lived with her at the Lloyd house until she died in 1809. They had two surviving children John Evans and Eleanor Mary Marsh Evans.

Charles Evans of Compton by Richard Dighton

The son, John Evans attended Rugby School and went on to become a vicar in Hereford. Charles’s daughter Eleanor married Stephen Poyntz the son of an Admiral. At some point and certainly before the marriage of his brother-in-law Richard Bailey Marsh in 1814, Charles Evans and his two children moved out of the Lloyd House to Compton near Tettenhall.

The portrait by Richard Dighton is still in our possession, but it is not definitively Charles Evans. It is labelled by Molly Evans as such a lot later. We believe it came with the effects of Sarah Evans from Eastbourne. Its date could be about 1820 and is clearly associated with the other Dighton portrait that we own of Charles’s brother – General Thomas Evans. The portrait would suggest that Charles Evans had a great interest in country sports in this case fishing. This would be equally true of his elder brother, Richard Evans, the proprietor of the Red Lion Inn in the centre of Wolverhampton.

Charles Evans died in 1820 at the age of 46. There is a memorial to both him and his wife in Penn Church. In his will, made in March 1820, Charles left everything to his two children. The sole executor of this will was his brother-in-law Richard Bayley Marsh (sic). Unfortunately Richard Bailey Marsh himself died, before he could obtain probate also in 1820. Richard Bailey Marsh and his wife Sarah Fereday did not have any children. She continued to live in the Lloyd House until 1862 followed by her younger second husband Rev William Dalton.

In 1880 the whole of the Marsh inheritance at the Lloyd house reverted to Charles’s only son, Rev John Evans. We know anecdotally from correspondence from Aunt Og that John Evans both was born and died in the Lloyd House – even though there was a period of nearly eighty years when he did not live there.

The account of Aunt Og’s visit to see John Evans in the Lloyd House c1882 is still resonant.

John Evans changed his name by deed poll to John Bradney Marsh in 1881, probably to reflect properly the origin of his inheritance.

Charles Evans only granddaughter was Harriet Sophia Marsh Evans (Bradney Marsh after 1881) who married her cousin Colonel Thomas Bradney Shaw-Hellier in 1899. They had no children and this brought to an end all the descendants of John Marsh of the Lloyd and Charles Evans.

Family of Charles EVANS and Ann Sophia (Sophie) MARSH

Husband: Charles EVANS

Wife: Ann Sophia (Sophie) MARSH

Child 1: John EVANS

Child 2: Eleanor Mary Marsh EVANS