Evansons

Dive Downe’s was the bishop of Cork and Ross and in 1700 toured the dioceses he says ‘Mount Gabriel is the haunt of wolves and there are no trees or shelter except rocks and bogs. The patron saint of Durrus is St Faughan in the parish of Durrus i.e. about Four Mile Water and at Blackrock near Bantry are about 30 Protestant families and in that part of the parish which is in Bantry are two English Schools kept by women.  All the inhabitants of Kilcrohane are Papists and the land very coarse except for that of the Bishop of Cork’s lands’. He refers to Vicar Thomas Holmes of Kilmacomoge preaching every fourth Sunday at Captain Evanson’s house at Four Mile Water.  Nathaniel Evanson the elder was the Lieutenant of Dragoons who received 2,400 acres of O’Donovan lands at Castle Donovan in the 1661. He mortgaged these lands and moved to Four Mile Water.  He had three children, Thomas whose son Edward settled in Antigua, a daughter who married John Beamish in 1678 and a son Charles who married Susan Arnopp in 1688 (daughter of Colonel Arnopp of Dunmanway).  Their eldest son Nathaniel married Mary Alleyn in 1724 and died at Four Mile Water in 1766.  Their son was Alleyn, and his son Nathaniel the third, who was at Four Mile Water in the 1790s was made a Justice of the Peace on the 27^th May 1799. They had numerous relations sugar planters in Antigua. He may also have been resident in Bandon. He married Mary Townsend Baldwin in 1784 and their children were Alleyn who was ordained, Nathaniel (1802-29) and Tonson (Richard) who built Friendly Cove probably around 1810.  He married Melian Donovan in 1812 who died childless and then Mary Beamish in 1816.  Friendly Cove passed to William Beamish Morris who married their daughter Catherine.  In Pigot’s Directory of 1824 Nathaniel Evanson and Richard Evanson are at Four Mile Water.  Nathaniel Evanson, Sea Lodge, Cork died on 1849 and the Rev. Alleyn Evanson died in 1853. In Slater’s Directory of 1846 Allen Evanson lives at the Court, Richard Tonson Evanson at Friendly Cove, and Richard Tonson Evanson Jnr. at Ardogina.  There is no reference to them in Thom’s 1862 Directory.  Richard Tonson Evanson was one of the judges of the Bantry Agricultural Show in 1861 and his address was Bantry.   Evanson’s Cove is shown, on the northern side of the road as a wooded estate, on the Ordnance survey map of 1842 in Ahakista but does not appear on the later map. There are two references to Evansons of Brookfield, Cork in the King’s Inns Admission rolls for the early 19^th.Century.  The Rev. A. Evanson sat on a committee in Bantry in 1824 to petition against the withdrawal of the linen bounty.

In 1864 Richard Evanson makes over Friendly Cove to his son-in-law and goes to live in Gurteenroe and in 1869 he has moved to Cork City.  That branch of Evanson line died out by the death of the last descendant Catherine Beamish Morris in 1898 aged 80, there are however Evanson descendants living in Cork.