Relative who died at the Alamo

I discovered recently that our grandfather Hiram had a great uncle who died in the Battle of the Alamo. (See link below.) He was Sam Evans, a brother of our ancestor Hannah Maria Evans, wife of Samuel G. Haynie. The fellow was 24 years old, and subsequently his father Musgrove Evans, who had moved to Texas with his children after his wife died, joined the army and fought for the Republic of Texas. I read this in another article, all of them sent to me by the man who put the Evans genealogy on line. There was another fairly young brother who was killed on the Chisholm Trail -- by bandits, I think.

Learning about this family particularly moves me because they were based in Pennsylvania, then upstate New York, and then Michigan. Here I had been thinking they were the only bona fide "Yankees" in our family tree! As Alexis de Tocqueville observed, there were many men on the move in the U.S. in the 1800's. In other words, you can't pigeonhole them by region, at least not the ones who lived their lives during that restless century.

Sam Evans was the namesake and grandson of "General" or Major Samuel Evans of the Revolutionary War period. On our mother's side of the family we have a Lt. William Evans ancestor from the Revolutionary period; in all likelihood these families were related --- because they were originally from Wales, were concentrated in two Pa. counties, and were all Quakers back in the day.

The Tillett book refers to an 1816 letter written by William Evans which indicated that he was very bothered by the institution of slavery. Said he wanted to move to Ohio, but it was "too late" for him. (He had moved from Pa. to Va.) --- His son-in-law James Wyche went to Ohio & looked things over, but decided that the free blacks were in worse condition than the slaves...

The following URL has been updated, as of 10/10/2016:

Samuel Brown Evans in the Handbook of Texas