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.)
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.