John Bevan (abt. 1646 - 1726)

Born about 1646 in Treverigg, Llantrisant, Glamorgan, Wales

Ancestors

Husband of Barbara (Aubrey) Bevan — married 1665 in Llantrisant, Wales [uncertain]

Descendants

Died 1726 at about age 80 in Treverigg, Llantrisant, Glamorgan, Wales

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Biography

John was a Friend (Quaker)

Parents

John Bevan, or ap Evan, may have been the son and heir of "Ieuan ap John, of Treverigg (in Llantrisant), Glamorgan," Wales^[1][2] and his wife Jane Richards, was born about 1646^[3] in Treverigg.^[4] See Research Notes (below) for a little discussion about uncertainties relating to his ancestry.

Marriage

John married Barbara Aubrey (born about 1637), "daughter of William Aubrey of Pencoed, Glamorgan, Wales, by Elizabeth, daughter of Thomas Thomas".^[1] A testimonial, preserved in the records of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, and including a memorandum by John himself, gives the marriage year as 1665.^[3][5][6]

Children

• Jane Bevan, married John Wood^[1]
• Evan Bevan,^[1] married Eleanor Wood^[7]
• Ann Bevan, married Owen Roberts^[1][8]
• Elizabeth Bevan, married Joseph Richardson^[1][9][10]
• Barbara Bevan^[1]

Additional Children^[11]

• Ann (born/died 1666)
• Katherine (1675-1683)

Quakerism

John converted to Quakerism soon after his 1665 marriage. His wife at first did not join him in this, arguing with him about religious matters. Then, at an Anglican service she attended, the priest "denounced [announced] his [John's] excommunication": she expostulated with the priest, and she became "convinced" - that is, she joined the Quakers. They, like many Quakers at the time, suffered persecution, and in 1675 some Quakers were arrested at their house and committed to prison for refusing to swear an oath when brought before the magistrates.^[3]

Pennsylvania

John's wife, hearing about William Penn's patent for Pennsylvania, persuaded John that it would be good for the family to immigrate there.^[3] They did so in 1683. He was a wealthy and leading Quaker there, and travelled much in Quaker ministry. He also represented Philadelphia for four terms in the provincial Assembly.^[1]

Return to Wales

In 1704 John and his wife returned to Wales with their youngest daughter Barbara. John describes how "through the Lord's great mercy we were preserved in that tedious voyage North about Scotland thro' many difficulties and from the cruelties also of the privateers, of which there were many on that coast as we were afterward informed." One of the dangers they escaped was the capture by privateers near Lundy Island of a ship on which they almost travelled. They reached their Welsh home around early October 1704.^[3] They never returned to America.^[1]

Barbara died on 26 January 1710/11 (1711 in modern reckoning).^[3]

John died in 1726 at Treverigg (in Llantrisant).^[1]

Quaker Meeting Transfer

• Certificate to Haverford Monthly Meeting, John Bevan and Barbara his wife, 1683, received from " ... the monthly Meeting of Cardiff and Treverig Glamorganshire in South Wales ... "^[12]
• Certificate to Haverford Monthly Meeting, John Bevan and Barbara his wife of Pennsylvania, 1697/8, received "after a visit to his friends in his native country from our Meeting at Traverg in Glamorganshire..."^[13]

John and his family immigrated from Treverigg to Pennsylvania in 1683, as "stated in the minutes of the Meeting at Trevereg, Glamorganshire, South Wales, '10th of ye 7 mo. [Oct.] in ye year 1683'

"We whose names are under written doe hereby sertifie unto all whom it may concern the great loss we and others have sustained in the removal of our deare friends John ap Bevan and Barbarah his wife, both belonging to this Meeting, with their tender family to Pennsylvania."^[14]

John and "'their tender family,' and some other relatives, removed to Pennsylvania, coming over in the ship Morning Star, with Hugh Roberts^[15] and party bound for the Thomas and Jones land, arrived at Philadelphia in November 1683. He and his wife brought the usual certificates of membership and removal from the Treverigg Friends' Meeting, and the Men's Meeting of Cardiff and Trefrig, dated 10, 7mo. 1683. Among the many signers, William Lewis; Howell, William, Watkins, and James Thomas; Thomas, Edward, Jenkin, and Mireck Howell, John David, John Mays, and his uncle, (his mother's brother), Thomas Richard (or Prichard) ap Evan, of Collena, for whose daughters, Elizabeth and Catherine, John Bevan bought some Haverford land, which he [later] bought back from them...."^[16]

Brother Charles

John is said to have had four brothers when he came of age, "his sister being dead before",^[14] and one of his brothers was Charles.^[17]

"Charles ab Evan (Bevan),... brother to John" is listed in a land patent as a grantee ("John Bevan's Land Patent").^[16]

John Bevan's will (dated March 1724/5) names his "brother-in Law William Aubrey of Pencoed, nephew Evan Bevan of Pont-y-moyle son of his brother Charles] and sons in law John Wood and Owen Roberts" as overseers. The will was witnessed by "Evan Prichard, David Morgan, Morgan David, Evan Bevan alias Jevans".^[18] Nephew Evan Bevan of Pont-y-moyle is identified as the son of his brother Charles in Glenn's Merion in the Welsh Tract....

Nephew Rees

Rees Thomas was a nephew of John Bevan, being the son of John's sister,^[19] who died before John came of age.^[14]

Rees married Martha Awbrey, niece of Barbara Aubrey, on 18 June 1692 at Haveford.^[20]

Rees and Martha had moved to Pennsylvania before they married, "accompanied by John Bevan, an uncle of Rees Thomas, and Barbara Awbrey Bevan, Martha's aunt."^[21][20]

Rees Thomas and Barbara Aubrey were cousins: His father was her mother's brother^[19] (Thomas Pritchard).^[16]

Martha was the daughter of Awbrey cousins. Martha's father was William Awbrey, son of Thomas, son of Richard; her mother was Elizabeth, daughter of William Awbrey, son of Richard.^[22][20]

Research Notes

Location Note

There are two places called Llantrisant, one in Anglesey, and the other in South Wales and historically in Glamorgan. The abstract of John's March 1724/5 will says he is "of Trefeurigg, in the parish of Llantrisant, in the county of Glamorgan".^[5] It is given as Treverigg, Llantrisant, Glamorgan, Wales in the location datafields for birth, marriage, and death, although Richardson only gives his death location. ~ Noland-165 19:46, 14 June 2018 (UTC), edited by Michael Cayley, 8 July 2021

Date Problem

John's birth is given in Richardson's 2011 Plantagenet Ancestry (volume 1, page 267)^[23] as 1646, which meshes with Glenn (p 174),^[5] who says John died at age 80, and that his will was "made in the first month (March), 1724-5, and proved 21 October, 1726".^[5] It also accords with the testimonial about John preserved by Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, which gives a birth year of about 1646.^[3]

John's birth year is omitted from both Magna Carta Ancestry (2011) and Royal Ancestry (2013), and both show John's parents (Jane Richards and Ieuan ap John) as married about 1664 - an obvious error,^[24] considering both works say his parents had four sons and that Ieuan died "before 1665".^[2][1] Ieuan's son John married Barbara in 1665, as he himself records.^[3]

John's Marriage

Both Richardson's Magna Carta Ancestry^[2] and Royal Ancestry^[1] have Ieuan ab Evan, John's father, as "underage in 1630" - which means Ieuan could have been born anytime after c1610. This easily works with John born c1646, as noted by Glenn (age 80 in 1726).^[5] The age difference between John and his wife Barbara, born 1637,^[1] is unusual but not impossible (with him 19 and her 28 when they married in 1665).

Support for both his wife's age and when they married is found in the lengthy quotation of a memorandum written by John and incorporated in the testimonial about him preserved in the records of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting. This gives the marriage year as 1665, his wife's age at death in January 1710/11 as "73 years and about 4 months" and record her saying in her last illness, "I take it as a great mercy that I am to go before thee, we are upwards of forty-five years married, and our love is rather more now towards one another than at the beginning,"^[3]

Lineage

John is listed by Douglas Richardson as a Gateway Ancestor descended from Surety Baron Richard de Clare.^[1][2] The alleged line of descent is though not reliably sourced, and rests essentially on unsourced old pedigrees. In the absence of firmer evidence, including for his mother and for his suggested mother's parentage, the Magna Carta Project is not accepting him as a Magna Carta Gateway. One source for the line of descent is a compilation of Welsh pedigrees made in the first half of the 19th century (MS 11964 held by the National Library of Wales), and this is not sufficient to give secure sourcing. Old pedigrees like these often contain significant errors.

Some of the issues were discussed in soc.genealogy.medieval in 2012.^[25]

The same SGM discussion questioned the father of Catherine Vaughan (Catherine Basset's grandmother). With Jane's mother established, the original poster concluded: "We've boiled down the Bevan descent to a question of which of the two William Vaughan first cousins was the father of Catrin, wife of David Evans of the Great House."^[26]

That post was in 2012. Richardson published Royal Ancestry in 2013, with William ap Watkin Vaughan as father of Catrin. Magna Carta Project guidelines say to follow Richardson "unless there is more recent published research that adds to or corrects his work." On occasion, this has been interpreted to include posts in soc.gen.medieval by Richardson; he has not changed the trail for John Bevan that is in Royal Ancestry (which is the same as in Magna Carta Ancestry, outlined below).

Alleged Royal Ancestry

The following trail, "The Royal Descent of Mrs. Arthur Dudley Cross of San Francisco", is provided for reference (it is mentioned in the G2G discussion about TAG [The American Genealogist] 59 (1983) and comes from Charles Henry Browning's unreliable Americans of Royal Descent, page 451, which also shows her royal descent from Barbara). Some of the connections are supported in Richardson's works. SGM disputes Watkin's parents (see note following the trail. See also WikiTree trails of another Awbrey family to the de Clares HERE.

0. Gateway Ancestor John Bevan

1. John is the son of Jane Richards who married Evan John

2. Jane is the daughter of Catrin Basset who married Richard Evan

3. Catrin is the daughter of Mary Evanswho married Thomas Basset

4. Mary is the daughter of Catrin Vaughan who married David ap Evan

5. Catrin is the daughter of William ap Watkin Vaughan

6. William is the son of Watkin Vaughan

7. Watkin is the son of Eleanor, who married Sir Roger Vaughan, Knt. "complete error" - see below for details

Note: In WikiTree, this couple has no children. The Watkin named as father in the preceding step (6.) is the son of a different Roger Vaughan and his wife Joan Whitney. The Magna Carta trail identified by the Project continues through that Watkin's son William, who - in WikiTree - is Catrin's father (the Catrin mentioned in the Research Notes, above).

8. Eleanor is the daughter of Elizabeth, who married Henry, Earl of Worcester

9. Elizabeth is the daughter of Sir Anthony Browne, standard bearer

10. Anthony is the son of Eleanor, who married Sir Thomas Browne

11. Eleanor is the daughter of Sir Thomas FitzAlan, Knt.

12. Thomas is the son of John Fitzalan de Arundel

13. John is the son of John Fitzalan, Lord Maltravers

14. John is the son of Eleanor, who married Richard, Earl of Arundel

15. Eleanor is the daughter of Henry, Earl of Leicester

16. Henry is the son of Blanche, who married Edmund, Earl of Leicester

17. Blanche is the daughter of Robert, Count of Artois

18. Robert is the son of Louis VIII, King of France

19. the trail continues back to Louis I, "Emperor of France, etc.", son of Charlemagne (see this trail).

Watkin: From a 2012 SGM discussion (specifically, this post), talking about Bevan's ancestry, notes that Glenn's Merion in the Welsh Tract (pages 168-169) has "an unsourced descent pedigree for John Bevan from Edward III, clearly authored by Glenn, that has Bevan descending from that monarch thru Lady Eleanor Somerset, dau of the 2nd Earl of Worcester & mother of Watkin Vaughan of Talgarth. We know that is complete error".

Sources

1. ↑ ^{1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 1.12 1.13} Douglas Richardson. Royal Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, 5 vols, ed. Kimball G. Everingham (Salt Lake City: the author, 2013), volume I, page 199 AUBREY 22.i. Barbara Aubrey; I:354-357 BEVAN; I:357 BEVAN 22. John Bevan (or ap Evan).
2. ↑ ^{2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3} Douglas Richardson. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, 4 vols, ed. Kimball G. Everingham, 2nd edition (Salt Lake City: the author, 2011), volume I, pages 190-192 BEVAN
3. ↑ ^{3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 3.8} US Quaker Meeting Records, Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, 1646-1757, Ancestry.com
4. ↑ See Research Notes, below.
5. ↑ ^{5.0 5.1 5.2 5.3 5.4} Thomas Allen Glenn. Merion in the Welsh tract with sketches of the townships of Haverford and Radnor, historical and genealogical collection concerning the Welsh barony in the province of Pennsylvania, settled by the Cymric Quakers in 1682 (Norristown Pa. : Herald Press, 1896; Digital Library@Villanova University, 2014), page 175-
6. ↑ Richardson's Royal Ancestry and Magna Carta Ancestry show 1664 as his parents' marriage date, in error. See Research Notes, above.
7. ↑ Online tree, written by Darrin Lythgoe (accessed 15 June 2018)
8. ↑ Thomas Allen Glenn, "Owen of Merion," The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 13, No. 2 (Jul., 1889), pp. 168-183 (The Historical Society of Pennsylvania; University of Pennsylvania Press). Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20083311 (see page 175)
9. ↑ John H Marton. Chester (and its vicinity,) Delaware County, in Pennsylvania : with genealogical sketches of some old families, Penn. (1877), "Biographical Sketch of John Bevan of Delaware Co.", pages 42-43.
10. ↑ Lyle, William Thomas. The Thomas Family... Philadelphia: J.B. Hoff (1907), pp. 14-18.
11. ↑ Two profiles for unsourced children who died young are likely theirs. In John's writings he relays his wife's words at the end of her life, in 1710, that they had been married "upwards of forty-five years", notes that they saw four children married and with children in Pennsylvania, and talks about the passing of Barbara, their youngest daughter (in 1704/5). While only five children are listed by Richardson, looking at the Family Group Sheet [in June 2018] for John: first child, Jane, shows birth year of 1668, eldest son Evan, born 1672, and next child born 1676, it's likely they had several other children who did not survive to maturity as well. ~ Liz Shifflett, 19 June 2018
12. ↑ "Index to Certificates from Wales and other places to Haverford Mo. Meeting Vol 1st," pg 27, items 2, John Bevan and Barbara his wife, 1683, received from "...the monthly Meeting of Cardiff and Treverig Glamorganshire in South Wales..."; Swarthmore College; Swarthmore, Pennsylvania; Index, 1683-1730; Collection: Quaker Meeting Records; Call Number: MR Ph:537; Ancestry, database with images, "U.S., Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935" (https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2189 : viewed 20 June 2018) > Pennsylvania > Montgomery > Radnor Monthly Meeting > Index, 1683-1730 > John Bevan [search criteria John Bevan 1693 +/- 10yrs].
13. ↑ "Index to Certificates from Wales and other places to Haverford Mo. Meeting Vol 1st," pg 27, items 3, John Bevan and Barbara his wife of Pennsylvania, 1697/8, received "after a visit to his friends in his native country from our Meeting at Traverg in Glamorganshire ... "; Swarthmore College; Swarthmore, Pennsylvania; Index, 1683-1730; Collection: Quaker Meeting Records; Call Number: MR Ph:537; Ancestry, database with images, "U.S., Quaker Meeting Records, 1681-1935" (https://search.ancestry.com/search/db.aspx?dbid=2189 : viewed 20 June 2018) > Pennsylvania > Montgomery > Radnor Monthly Meeting > Index, 1683-1730 > John Bevan [search criteria John Bevan 1693 +/- 10yrs].
14. ↑ ^{14.0 14.1 14.2} Levick's article, page 404, page 405
    • "The Early Welsh Quakers and Their Emigration to Pennsylvania," James J. Levick, The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 17, No. 4, 1893 (The Historical Society of Pennsylvania; University of Pennsylvania Press)
15. ↑ Probably Hugh Roberts, father of Owen who married the Bevans' daughter Ann in 1697 (see her profile).
16. ↑ ^{16.0 16.1 16.2} Charles H. Browning. Welsh Settlement of Pennyslvania (1912), page 168 (accessed 13 July 2020).
17. ↑ Ieuan ap John and Jane Richards had "four sons, including John, Gent., and Charles" (Richardson, Royal Ancestry, I:357 BEVAN 21).
18. ↑ Glenn. Merion in the Welsh Tract..., page 176; page 171 identifies "Evan Bevan alias Jevan" as son of his brother, Charles. See also Will of John Bevan (a WikiTree space page).
19. ↑ ^{19.0 19.1} Colonial and Revolutionary Families of Pennsylvania, Vol. 3, page 1363 (accessed 27 July 2020).
20. ↑ ^{20.0 20.1 20.2} George Vaux, "Rees Thomas and Martha Awbrey, Early Settlers in Merion", The Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol. 13, No. 3 (Oct., 1889), pp. 292-297 (published by The Historical Society of Pennsylvania; University of Pennsylvania Press).
21. ↑ From Martha's profile (accessed 28 July 2020), citing Jon A. Awbrey's Aubrey/Awbrey - Dominion and Decline (2007).
22. ↑ See Elizabeth Awbrey's profile for more information/sources (accessed 28 July 2020).
23. ↑ Douglas Richardson, Plantagenet Ancestry, 2nd edn. (2011), 3 vols, volume 1, page 267.
24. ↑ This error is also noted in the SGM discussion:
    

    'I noticed a couple of glaring chronological bloopers in his Bevan line. On page 163 he says that John Bevan's father Evan ap John "appears to have died before 1665" but that he "married about the year 1664". Presumably the latter date should be 1646, as he subsequently says (on page 170) that John Bevan was born ca. 1646 and that his parents died when he was very young, leaving five children of whom John was the eldest.' (excerpt of an SGM post by John Higgins, 25 August 2012, accessed 17 July 2020).

25. ↑ 28 September 2012 post by Loren, within the SGM discussion RPA Addition: David Evans of the Great House, August-September 2012 (accessed 17 July 2020).
26. ↑ This post (25 August 2012) by Brad Verity in the SGM discussion (accessed 17 July 2020).

• Richardson, Douglas. Magna Carta Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, 4 vols, ed. Kimball G. Everingham. 2nd edition. Salt Lake City: the author, 2011. See also WikiTree's source page for Magna Carta Ancestry.
• Richardson, Douglas. Royal Ancestry: A Study in Colonial and Medieval Families, 5 vols, ed. Kimball G. Everingham. Salt Lake City: the author, 2013. See also WikiTree's source page for Royal Ancestry.
• Testimonial, incoporating memorandum by John Bevan himself, in records of Philadelphia Monthly Meeting: US Quaker Meeting Records, Philadelphia Monthly Meeting, 1646-1757, Ancestry.com