EVANS, HENRY (fl. 1787-1839), Arminian Baptist minister.
The very little that is known of him is set down here for the convenience of students. He was b. in Carmarthen town, was a member of Dark Gate church, and began preaching in 1787. From 1788 till 1791 he was at Bristol Baptist Academy. In 1791 he was living at Merthyr Tydfil, whether as a pastor is uncertain, but he certainly had a chapel there later, and Merthyr Tydfil General Baptist church appears in Titus Lewis's list, 1810, printed by David Peter in his Hanes Crefydd yng Nghymru. However, on 5 Dec. 1792 Evans was ordained pastor of Craig-y-fargod General Baptist church (see under Winter, Charles), by David Saunders I (see under Saunders, Evan) of Aberduar and Morgan John Rhys (Rippon, Baptist Register, i, 523) — a renewal of contact between that church and the Baptists. Evans signs the minutes of the General Baptist Assembly at its meeting at Craig-y-fargod in 1809 (Monthly Repository, 1809, 695). It is still not clear that he had removed from Merthyr. In 1814, a ‘W. Rees’ appears at Craig-y-fargod (ibid., 1814, 64 — note that these are minutes of the Unitarian Assembly). The church waned; the chapel was closed by 1830 and sold to the Independents in 1833 (Hanes Egl. Ann., ii, 311-12). Evans's Merthyr church also faded out; its chapel was bought by the Particular Baptists in 1812-13 (D. Jones, Hanes Bed. Deheubarth Cymru, 592 — Jones, who was at the time a printer in the town, had a hand in the purchase). What became of Henry Evans afterwards is not known, but he was alive in 1839 (ibid., 440).
Author:
Emeritus Professor Robert Thomas Jenkins, C.B.E., D.Litt., Ll.D., F.S.A., (1881-1969), Bangor.
