The Australian Relations

Admiral Andrew Fitzherbert Evans, whose daughter Marianne married William Francis Raymond Stallard-Penoyre in 1830, was born in London in 1766. He was the second son and third child of an eminent Apothecary Surgeon, Mr. Thomas Evans, of Knightsbridge, and was baptised at St, Mary Abbot’s Church, Kensington. In June 1779 he was admitted to Westminster School and less than a year later in April 1780 entered the Royal Navy as a ‘Captain’s Servant’ on the ‘Bedford’. He served on the ‘Bedford until late 1782, rising to Midshipman and being present at the Battle of Chesapeake, which the British lost in the American War of Independence, and the Battle of Dominica in April 1782, in which the British defeated the French. He was transferred to the ‘Quebec’ and then the ‘Diomede’ serving in the British Blockade of Philadelphia, and then the ‘Berwick’, supplying stores to the British naval bases in Antigua and Jamaica. From 1784-1786 he served as an Acting Lieutenant on the ‘Porcupine’ and then returned to England. In 1788 the British Navy ordered a nautical survey of Bermuda with a view to founding a new naval base there, and in January 1789 a letter from the Admiralty ordered Lt. Thomas Hannaford Hurd (1746-1823) to carry this out and take Lt. Andrew Fitzherbert Evans as his Assistant Surveyor. Evans spent the next five years working on the survey except for a spell in 1794 when he returned to England as his father was dying, and when he happened to be on board the British frigate ‘Concorde’ during an engagement with French ships in the English Channel in which he nearly lost an eye to a flying splinter of wood but his courage in assisting maintaining control of the Bridge resulted in his being “mentioned in despatches.” Later, on the same ‘Concorde’ deployment, he was going ashore on the Ile Dieu with 4,000 ball cartridges when he was attacked by a group of French Revolutionaries and only saved himself by jumping overboard and swimming to a British cutter. After his father’s death he returned to Bermuda and married Jehoaddan (Hody) Tucker, a member of a well-known Bermuda family.

Soon after his return Evans was promoted to Commander of a new Bermuda sloop the ‘Spencer’. During its sea trials off Bermuda in May 1796 he spotted a much larger French corvette ‘La Volcan’ which had 12 guns and 100 men and which had been sailing round the Caribbean and Atlantic plundering and disrupting supply routes. Evans and the ‘Spencer’ gave chase, engaged ‘La Volcan’ and captured her with minimal damage and the loss of only one British sailor. ‘La Volcan’ lost twenty crew.

In 1798 Evans was appointed a Post Captain and took command of the 520 ton 24 gun frigate ‘Porcupine,’ and in 1799 he gave the exiled Louis-Philippe, Duke of Orleans, who later became the only elected King of the French, safe passage from Nassau to Halifax. In July 1802 he was promoted to captain the 32 gun ‘Aeolus’ and in 1804 to the 64 gun ‘Veteran’, becoming Flag Captain to Vice Admiral Dacres. During this time his wife and growing family lived in St. George’s, Bermuda until in 1808 he was transferred back to England. He was made Agent for Naval Prisoners of War in Stapleton, near Bristol, and rented a house in Somerset and another in Hans Place, London until in 1811 he was posted back to Bermuda to supervise the building of the new dockyard at Ireland Island. During this time in Bermuda his surviving children, Tom (born 1795), Eliza (1797), Marianne Belcher (1803/?4), Dacres (1807), and Kate (1809), were joined by the two sons who were to settle in Australia, William Tucker Evans, born in 1812 and Andrew Fitzherbert Evans Jnr, born in 1814.

In 1817 the family left Bermuda and returned to England but Evans was over 50, the war against Napoleon was over, and he was left on half pay and not offered another post. With five children still at home money was tight and the family moved first to France, where living was cheaper, and then to Jersey. In May 1825 he was promoted to Rear Admiral of the White, but in June 1826 he died suddenly in Jersey.

His widow Jehoaddan (Hody) Evans and her three youngest surviving children, Marianne, Kate and Herbert Jnr. lived in London near Hody’s sister in Hans Place. In 1830 Marianne married the Rev. William Francis Raymond, later Stallard-Penoyre, and went to live in her husband’s parish of Stockton, Worcestershire, and her sister Kate went to live there too. For over forty years ‘Aunt Kate’ wrote long letters full of family news to her brothers in Australia.

Hody died aged 60 in 1833 at Hans Place and was buried in St. Luke’s Church, Chelsea.

William Tucker Evans entered the Naval College at Portsmouth but after serving on various ships he turned down a posting to the ‘Edinburgh’, a 74 gun ship on the advice of Sir Thomas Hardy, Nelson’s Trafalgar Captain and his father’s old friend, who said that naval promotions at that time were extremely slow and Tucker would do better to take up an offer of work in Australia from his first cousin Sir Francis Forbes, Chief Justice of New South Wales. He sailed to Australia in October 1834 on the ‘Undaunted’ and managed Forbes properties on the Hunter River. In 1839 he married Janet Pagan and they had at least five children, Harley George (1840), Catherine (1843), Andrew Fitzherbert (1844/5), Eliza (1848) and Dacres Fitzherbert (1851). Janet died in 1858 and in 1861 he married Julia Marie Mackey and with her had at least another five childred, Alfred (1862), Raymond Slade (1865), Frances (1867), Mabel (1868), and Stuart Guyong (1874). He lived at the town of Orange in NSW where he was the Clerk of Petty Sessions for about 30 years.

Andrew Fitzherbert Evans (Herbert) was bought an Ensigncy in the 26th Regiment of Foot in India (Cameronians) for £450 by his mother shortly before her death. In 1834 he married Sarah Pelagie Even in Calcutta Cathedral and they had two daughters but mother and both daughters died within seven weeks of each other in late 1836 and were buried in the same grave at the Military Burial Ground in Bowanipore. In 1837 Herbert left India on the ‘Strathisla’ escorting regimental prisoners to the Coloby of New South Wales, and in June 1938 sent a letter of resignation from the Army to the officers commanding the 26th Regiment, Bengal saying “The grounds for my wish to quit the Service is my determination of becoming a settler in this colony.” In October 1838 he married Anna Maria Gordon and they had three sons. By 1852 he had bought more than 1,000 acres to the west of Warwick Township, called ‘Mile End’ and ‘Mount Gordon’ and by the early 1860s had purchased a further 60,000 acres near Milmerran. He became Warwick’s first Clerk of Petty Sessions (1850-51) and a Police Magistrate (1852-54). He was a successful farmer and pioneer of the heavy horse industry. He died in 1870 and Anna Maria died in 1899, both at ‘Mount Gordon.’