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Below is a family biography included in Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi County, Arkansas published by Goodspeed Publishing Company in 1889.  These biographies are valuable for genealogy research in discovering missing ancestors or filling in the details of a family tree. Family biographies often include far more information than can be found in a census record or obituary.  Details will vary with each biography but will often include the date and place of birth, parent names including mothers' maiden name, name of wife including maiden name, her parents' names, name of children (including spouses if married), former places of residence, occupation details, military service, church and social organization affiliations, and more.  There are often ancestry details included that cannot be found in any other type of genealogical record.

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George H. Evans (deceased). For nearly a quarter of a century the name that heads this sketch was borne by a man who was identified with the interests of Mississippi County, Ark., in more ways than one. Honest and worthy in every particular, his life was one of great industry, and was spent in an earnest endeavor to do good to all. His father, Jesse Evans, was a successful cotton planter near Shelbyville, Tenn., where he married Miss Levina Tipton, a sister of Gen. Jacob Tipton, of Tennessee. George H. Evans’s birth occurred in Shelbyville, Tenn., where he remained until seventeen years of age, and then finished his education at Covington, in the same State. Afterward he became deputy county clerk of Tipton County, and was then elected to the office of circuit clerk, which position he held for a number of years before leaving that county. In 1836 he was married to Miss Edith White, daughter of William White, of Tipton County, Tenn., but formerly of North Carolina, and the fruits of this union were three children: Levina Tipton, now the widow of J. W. Uzzell [see sketch and portrait]; J. Tipton Evans, the only son, who enlisted in the late war, but died before reaching the field, and Edith E., married to Dr. St. Clair, by whom she had one son. In 1844, after the death of his father, who had entered a large tract of land in Mississippi County, but had not proven it up, George H. Evans, then a married man with a wife and three children, moved upon the place until he could prove up, after which he returned with them to Tipton County, Tenn., and there resided until 1850. He then returned to the farm with his family, and there continued until his death, which occurred in 1867. He left each of his daughters 1,000 acres of land and his widow 5,000 or 6,000 acres, only a few hundred acres, however, under cultivation. Mrs. Evans now occupies one of the most desirable places to be found in the State. She has ten acres of fine orchard, besides some seven acres surrounding the house, where she has 1,000 different varieties of fruits and flowers. She takes great pride in her flowers and spends much of her time among them. She may well be proud of them, for she has virtually made the ‘‘wilderness blossom as the rose,’’ as when she came there, in 1850, all was a deep forest and the cane-brake was twenty feet high. Mrs. Evans was born in Pennsylvania, but left that State with her parents when six years old and moved to Tipton County, Tenn.

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This family biography is one of 162 biographies included in Biographical and Historical Memoirs of Mississippi County, Arkansas published in 1889.  View the complete description here: Mississippi County, Arkansas History, Genealogy, and Maps

View additional Mississippi County, Arkansas family biographies here: Mississippi County, Arkansas Biographies

View a map of 1889 Mississippi County, Arkansas here: Mississippi County, Arkansas Map

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