Columbus, GA rests on the banks of the Chattahoochee River, straddling the the Alabama / Georgia state line, on the snowline in the middle of the state. Snow to the northern half of the state, rarely here or to the south of its humid subtropical climate. Founded by 1830 with 1000 residents, Columbus expanded swiftly up to the Civil War and during the Gilded Age just before the turn of the century, with 17,500 residents entering the 20th C. Railroads bring cotton to the river for shipping. Textile mills spring up around the river. Industry is king.
In 1900, Joseph Jackson Smith is a machinist at Hamburger Cotton Mills, living at 2215 Thomas Ave, in Columbus, Georgia. We don’t know much about his early life. He was born in June of 1863, in Tennessee, to Napoleon Bonaparte & Elizabeth Smith. Maybe. We think. Both of his parents were from Tennessee and are believed to have died before he, at the ripe old age of 30(!), married 20-year-old Warner “Warnie” Pittman, in 1893, in Columbus, Georgia. A year (9 months?) later, they produce Royce Calvin, then pause briefly before bringing Joseph Jasper and Harry William into the world. In between Joe & Harry, they move from Alabama to Georgia? Maybe.
At any rate, by 1900, they and their 3 children, an 8-year-old, a toddler and a baby, are living in their own home at 2215 Thomas Ave., where Warnie will continue to live for the next 40 years, until she sells the homestead and moves in with her youngest son. The street name changes to 6th Ave. in 1929. Warnie moves out a decade later, in 1939.
Warnie’s 3 sons will live with her and marry and continue to live near her for the rest of her life. Joseph Jackson has just under 2 decades left. He dies in 1918, at the young age of 54, still living at that 2215 Thomas Ave. address he bought for his family. He works steadily at the Hamburger Cotton Mills from 1900 on, rising from machinist through master mechanic to overseer in 1912.
His middle son, Joseph Jasper, starts work early, bringing home a paycheck to contribute to the family pot starting in 1910, at the tender age of 12, working as a clerk. Warnie herself begins working outside the home just a few years later, clerking at the Bee Hive in 1912. Something may have happened to Joseph Jackson, possibly an industrial accident? as he is not listed as working at the mill from that 1912 listing through his death 6 years later.
Warnie continues to work in ladies dress sales until her death (confirm??) in 1949, starting in 1912 at the Bee Hive for 5 years, at Lee Millinery and Lowenherz Bros for a few years each, and then in the mid-20s at Kayser-Lilienthal for the next 2 decades, or the rest of her working life.
Unlike the stability Warnie enjoys, her son Joseph Jasper Smith’s domestic life is far more turbulent, with frequent moves and multiple marriages. After his early work experience, he embarks on getting himself kicked out of “every military academy in the state” as he will later proudly recount to his children. The constant in his life is the Central of Georgia Railroad, where he is employed life-long, since at least 1918, from his return home from his academic escapades to live with his mother, until his death in 1964.
1918 (possibly earlier) – thomas ave.
marries Harriotte in 1927 at 1138 Front Ave, lives there in 1928
1930 – 813 21st
1934 – 1935 8th Av
1937 thru ’42 – 2308 16th Av Harriotte is gone by 1942
marries Loretta when? they live 1952 & ’56 – Sylacauga 206 W Walnut
Joseph Manly Evans, in the opening year of the 20th Century, is living at home with his prodigious siblings, running a drug store with 2 of his older brothers, and managing an opera house with his friend.
2nd youngest of eight, born after the war that put his country into so much turmoil, his life has been relatively pleasant and consistent up to now,. Everything is about to change. In the next decade, he’ll get married, start having his own passel of children, and lose both parents and his first child, his namesake.
A relative newcomer to the area — he is the first of his family born locally — he soon has his eye on the prettiest, and one of the most socially important, girls in town.
Mary Charlton Ligon, just turned 20, is the granddaughter of Alexander Brown tm, a leading merchant in Anderson since before 1849 & a rigid Presbyterian, residing in one of the oldest homes in town. She’s been away in Spartanburg, attending college. Her grandfather died about six years ago (she lost her grandmother a decade before that, when she was only five, but she can only just remember her). She’s gotten used to death, as she has lost 3 siblings throughout her 2 decades (her mom has had much rougher time of it that her future mother-in-law did). But now her father, a Methodist minister in Greenville lately become a newspaper editor in Columbia, has died.
Her mother, Mary Elizabeth Towers Ligon, packs up the family, all 4 younger brothers and her baby sister, and moves back home. Mary Charlton joins her, once she has finished college.
Mary Elizabeth Towers Ligon, a truly formidable woman, remains a powerful figure in her children and grandchildren and great-grandchildren and even great-great-grandchildrens’ lives to this day. Her portrait hangs in my hallway. (Her grandson, Thomas Charlton Evans, distributed copies to all of his offspring, so you see how far her reach extended.)
Mary Elizabeth Towers Ligon
Within 4 years, Mary Charlton Ligon, oldest of six children (and daughter of the oldest of six), has married Joseph Manly Evans, second youngest of a very tight clan of eight siblings. As newlyweds, they move into her mother’s ancestral home, at 619 W. Whitner. Joe quits working at the drug store with his brothers to sell real estate, while his new brother-in-law starts working there as a pharmacist. They have their first child, Joseph Manly Evans, and lose him before his first birthday.
On April 28th, 1910, Joe, aged 39, and Mary, 27, are living with Mary (Sr.), who has recently turned 50, in the old A.B. Towers house. Towers Ligon, 23, Mary Elizabeth’s middle child, is a pharmacist at the Evans brothers’ drug store. Lou Ellen Ligon, Mary Elizabeth’s baby, is only 14 and still attending school. Joe and Mary have just had their second child, my grandfather(!) Thomas Charlton Evans, who is two months old. Mary Charlton is so nervous she can hardly stop checking on him fifteen times a day. Joe is working in real estate. And Mary McCoy, 30, public school teacher, is boarding with them. Yes, there are *3* adult Mary’s in this house: wife, mother-in-law & boarder.
Over the next decade, Joe hustles hard, giving up first his interest in the opera company, and then his investment in his brothers’ pharmacy, to focus on business development, as VP of Home B&L Ass’n, as Sec. at Brogan (cotton) Mills, as VP of Townsend Lumber Co. He works primarily as a real estate agent, and partners with James Farmer & Bryan Walton, who is also an IRS agent, to sell insurance, at 315 1/2 N. Main.
By 1920, Joe has done well enough in real estate, lumber and insurance to set up his own establishment. He and Mary are living in Centreville Township, Anderson, SC, on North Main St., in a home that Joe owns, free and clear. They have a 9-year-old boy (a future engineer), an 8-year old girl (named Mary[!!] but called Polly, because ENOUGH with the Mary’s, already), and a toddler boy (a future minister). They will be blessed with one more girl who lives, my adored (great-)Aunt Gene, about whom much later.
Joe and his brothers continue to live and work closely together, supporting each others’ business and family interests over the years. George is still running Evans Pharmacy, as his son, George, Jr., branches out into People’s Pharmacy and Standard Drug. Belton manages the B&O Evans store. John Furman Evans runs a stocks and bonds business out of Joe’s office, now called “The Evans Building”. Joe is the President and Treasurer of his insurance partnership, although this doesn’t last too much longer. Textiles are becoming king in Anderson! Joe focuses on the H. C. Townsend cotton mill, going from manager to general manager & ass’t treasurer by the end of the decade.
As the 1930s begin, Joe’s home at 1307 N. Main Ex., Centreville Township, Anderson, is worth $10,000. Joe is the manager at the HC Townsend cotton mill. They have their own radio set. He and Mary, happy homemaker, have 4 kids, boy/girl/boy/girl, 2 teenagers and 2 pre-teens. They have a 24-year-old boarder living with them, a stenographer at the same mill Joe manages.
Loss comes early this decade, as Joe loses two of his older brothers in the first few years, first George, who was just a few years older than he was, and then one of his oldest brothers, Eugene Jr. With George’s death, the Evans Pharmacy closes its doors. George, Jr. has his hands full with the People’s Pharmacy and doesn’t need his father’s old-skool inventory or real property. Joe turns his attention to city development, becoming VP of the Anderson Community Hotel Corp. He forms a new insurance partnership, this one with Aubrey McCown and Ernest Johnston, offering fire and casualty insurance and bonds, in the Evans Building at 315 1/2 N. Main. He continues as General Mgr. and Ass’t Treasurer of the H. C. Townsend Cotton Mill, as his primary employment. Over the course of the decade, Belton retires from managing the B&O Evans store, and his sister Margaret moves on to become the librarian at the Anderson Public Library by 1940.
Mary’s life changes completely as the decade progresses and her children fly their way out of the nest. Unlike their parents, none of her children linger at home for long. By mid-decade, Mary is already a grandmother, as her oldest son, Thomas Charlton Evans, and his wife, Charlotte Ann Orr, get going on their passel of children, starting with my father, Thomas Charlton Evans, Jr., in 1936.
Mary doesn’t get to spend as much time with that first baby as she’d like, and has barely seen the second grandson, named for his grandfather, Joseph Manley, since her son the engineer & his wife the social butterfly move first to LaGrange, GA, where Tom is born, and then to Charleston, SC, back to the Lowcountry, where Joe is born, for T. Charlton’s engineering studies at the Citadel. Mary’s grandmother role becomes part of her life, however, as everyone will soon be calling her Gar-gar (pronounced ‘ga-ga’) like her grandkids do. By 1940 only her baby Gene is still living at home, a fresh-faced 19-year-old about to launch into the world.
In 1940, Mary’s husband, Joe, is working 48 hours a week at the twine mill, bringing home $3600 a month in salary along with his investments & income from his other business interests. Her sister-in-law, Margaret, now a librarian at Anderson College, moves in with them the next year, and Gene, still living at home, starts working as a teacher. Belton, Joe’s younger brother, still happily married to Claudia, has closed the B&O store and turns to practicing real estate, which will occupy him for the next several decades, while J. Furman, his next older brother, equally happily married to Ruth, continues his career-long stockbroker practice.
During Joe’s last decade with Mary, before his death in 1951, he works almost as hard in the first 5 years, dropping first his hotel interests and then the management of the cotton mill (his fulltime job) before finally retiring, at the end of the 2nd World War, to enjoy his family and the fruits of his investments for the last 5 years he was granted among us.
Mary enjoys another decade with her grandkids, after Joe passes, leaving us herself just as her great-grandchildren are taking their first breaths in this world, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, in 1962, some 134 years after we started our tale, with Eugene Goldsmith Evans, breathing in that Tuscaloosa air.
Welcome to Piglet’s family tales. Like fairy tales, but related.
Our story begins in March 30th, 1828, in Tuscaloosa, Alabama (it’s where they hunt elephants, you know — because their tusks are looser?), when Eugene Goldsmith Evans draws in his first breath. He is the first son of John Evans, of Gloucester, and Isabella Goldsmith, from Charleston, later of Savannah. They met and married in Savannah, Georgia, March 25th, 1823, when Isabella was only 23, and moved to Alabama. 5 years later, they welcome Eugene into the world.
Isabella and John produce a brother every 2 years for Eugene, and one sister in between, for the next 4 years. By the time he’s six, he has 1 sister and 3 brothers. Tragedy strikes 3 years later, in Montgomery, Alabama, when his father dies, at the young age of only 36.
Isabella is a remarkable woman. She rears those 5 children by herself, making a living by teaching piano. 12 years later, by 1850, they are living together in a home that Isabella owns, worth $1000, in Savannah, where Eugene has begun practicing as an engineer. At 21! His brothers are at sea, working as a printer, and studying. His older sister Virginia is not accounted for, possibly she is away at college? In another 4 years, she will marry a Chapin, move away to Virginia and rear a passel of her own children. (A passel == 5.) (Some uncertainty re: Isabella’s age, self-reported on the census forms as 10 years less than it should be. I hope so, else she married at 13. But her gravestone agrees, reporting her age as 72 years in 1874, which is close enough? I hope?)
Over the next decade, everything about Eugene’s life changes. He gets married, moves to South Carolina, lives with his mother-in-law (another remarkable woman, in a completely different way!), and starts rearing his own passel-plus-plus of children. His mother Isabella remains in Savannah, launching & supporting her children into the world and teaching music from her home at 109 West Broad St until she dies in 1874. She continues to make a comfortable living, with one son or another living with her through the years. On August 2nd, 1870, her home is worth $15,000 (property appreciation, same location) and she has $800 in other monies. She is listed in the Savannah city directory for 1870 as a music teacher at the corner of West Broad and Robert along with her son W.R., the printer. There may have been some raw carrot-eating moments in there, but she seems to have made it through the major events of the 1860s relatively unscathed.
On October 17th, 1860, Eugene is living in Greenville, South Carolina, with his mother-in-law, Sophia Divver, who is keeping house for them in the $2000 home that she owns (along with personal estate of $10,300 — Sophia’s money is a problem; we’ll get to why later) and Sophia’s young adult sons, one a carpenter and the other a student, as well as his wife, 25-year old Sarah Jane, and their 3 children under the age of 6 (one girl, 2 boys). Eugene is working as an engineer, and has a 22-year-old clerk boarding with him, probably same working for his company. A lively household.
Whatever disturbances the 1860s may have brought, in 1870 Eugene is head of his own household, living in Pendleton Township, Anderson County, SC, where he will continue wielding a disproportionate amount of influence as a very solid citizen of Anderson for the rest of his and some of his notable descendants’ lives. He is now a merchant, with $3000 of net worth. His wife, Sarah Jane, is keeping house for the 7 children she has churned out, 5 of whom are in school, 2 of whom are at home, tripping her underfoot. And she’s pregnant again, with my great-grandfather, Joseph Manly Evans! Sarah Jane does very well in the motherhood department, producing 2 more boys and losing a third child (her only baby loss) in the early years of the 1870s.
Moving forward another decade, in 1880, he has resumed practicing as an engineer. His mom in Savannah has passed, but most of his kids are still living at home with him, in Anderson. His oldest daughter, Virginia, is teaching music, like her grandmother did. His second eldest son, Eugene, Jr., is clerking. Teenagers Lula, who will pass next year, and Maggie are in school. George, his teenage son, has apprenticed to a printer. Furman, Joseph and Belton are still in elementary school. (Oldest son James has moved out?)
The 1890s are lost to a fire of the census records :-(, but most of the family is still together in 1900, living at 414 N. McDuffy St., in Anderson, SC. By now, Eugene and Sarah have been married for 45 years and will continue happily married until their deaths 8 & 9 years later. His two oldest sons, James and Eugene, Jr., have moved out (married? living nearby? stay tuned! this family is tight….), and his eldest daughter Virginia has married and had a son, Benjamin, and moved back home.
Eugene, 72, has retired from his engineering practice. Sarah, 65, has her patience tested and her hands full with household management. Virginia, 44, is teaching music, and rearing her 3-year-old toddler. Margaret, 36, is teaching, and opening the library for the Women’s Library Association (that will become the Carnegie Library) 3 days a week. George, John and Joseph (33 – 29) have opened a drug store together with Dr. J. C. Harris, selling drugs, toilet articles, paints, oils, etc., and Joseph is also running the Anderson Opera House, with his friend N. B. Sharpe. George, in addition to his interests in the drugstore and the general store, is or will soon be running the phone company, the cotton mill, and the bank, and become VP at the savings and loan and the electric company. (John is faithfully minding the store while his brothers pursue their other business interests.) Belton, 26, is a merchant. His sisters, Margaret and Virginia, will both join him in running the B&O Emporium: clothing, shoes, hats and mens furnishings.
Anderson, SC, is about as far away from the Lowcountry as you can get. Tucked up in the far northwest corner of the SC triangle, it is closer to Atlanta, GA, and to Charlotte, NC, than it is to Charleston, SC, or Savannah, GA.
When Eugene Goldsmith Evans relocated there in 1861 with his wife and their growing family (2 kids born, 8 more on the way), the population was less than 700. By his death in 1908, more than 9.500 people lived in Anderson. As an engineer in an industrial, textile town, he helped shape the fabric of the city. His last residence was at 414 North McDuffie St.
His children went on to be business and cultural leaders in the community, running a drug store (102 Whitner), a general store (107 South Main), a power company, a savings and loan, a stocks trading company, an opera house (118 E. Benson), and so forth.
