Lewis Evans

Background

Lewis Evans was born about 1700, in Pennsylvania and spent a considerable portion of his life there.

Career

He was early trained as a surveyor and in the pursuit of this occupation traveled extensively throughout the Middle Colonies.

During these travels he made many observations and collected much material for “A Map of Pennsylvania, New-Jersey, New-York, And the Three Delaware Counties” which was published in 1749. This map is especially important because it traced in considerable detail the roads centering in Lancaster, York, and Carlisle, over which the great migrations from Pennsylvania across Virginia to the Carolinas and Tennessee took place.

In 1752 he published a revision of this map, incorporating several corrections and additions.

His best-known map, however, is “A General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America, ” which included the country from the Falls of the Ohio to Narragansett Bay and from Virginia to Montreal.

This was published in 1755 in connection with a pamphlet of Geographical, Historical, Political, Philosophical and Mechanical Essays: The First, Containing an Analysis of a General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America.

Printed by B. Franklin and D. Hall. MDCCLV.

This map, which was used by Braddock in his campaign, soon came to be regarded as the best map of the region; and because of the care and accuracy with which it was prepared was generally accepted as the standard authority in settling boundary disputes.

In dedicating his map to Governor Thos. Pownall with the encomium that he esteemed him the best judge of it in America, Evans, long the tool of the Pownall faction, aroused bitter feeling among the Shirley adherents who, through a letter published in the New York Mercury of January 5, 1756, severely criticized the “Analysis” and its writer.

Evans, undaunted, published five days later, Geographical, Historical, Political, Philosophical and Mechanical Essays.

Number II, in which he replied to his opponents in a vigorous fashion.

He contemplated continuing the series, but in the following June he died, in New York City, while under arrest for a slander against Gov. Robert Hunter Morris (Stevens, post, 1920, p. 13).

Another project which he never carried out was that of publishing maps of the separate colonies in greater detail and upon a larger scale.

Some of these editions give credit to Evans, while others do not.

Although Pownall denounced the pirated editions of Evans’s work, others continued to issue from the press, and even as late as 1814 the old copper plate of Kitchin’s piracy of 1756, after fifty-eight years of life, was reissued as a new and general map.

Works

More photos

• book

  • Geographical, historical, political, philosophical and mechanical essays. Number II. Containing a letter, representing the impropriety of sending ... in the New-York Mercury, No 178. Jan. 5, 1756

    ( The 18th century was a wealth of knowledge, exploration...)

  • A General Map of the Middle British Colonies in America

Views

In the “ Analysis, ” Evans pointed out the advantages to the English colonies of the Ohio country and urged a general study of that region and the ways by which it might be reached so that the French might be more easily driven out.