Sunday, May 6, 2012

Matilda Jane Evans

1931 50th Wedding Anniversary in Mitchell Nebraska
Matilda Jane Evans, my wife's great grandmother and wife of Henry Turbush Barker, was born in Missouri in 1861 (The year of Lincoln's inauguration).   In 1870 (9 y.o.) she lived in the city of Western, Johnson county Nebraska with her parents, younger sisters Kathurean and Agatha, and younger brother William.  Nebraska was formed in 1854 in the Nebraska-Kanasas act and it was extensively settled beginning in the 1860s with the Homestead Act.  The Evans family was part of this migration when they moved from Missouri to Nebraska sometime between 1861 and 1870 when the Nebraska population rose from only 28,000 to 123,000.
Ten years later Matilda was working as a servant in the Filley household in Mud Creek, Nebraska.  The rest of the family remained in Johnson county.  She married Henry Barker in 1881 and by the turn of the century she had 8 children, Mabel (15), Charles (12), John (10), Agnes (9), Lloyd (7), Kate (5), Alice (4), and an older child I have not identified.  By 1910, they had added George.   The family, as nearly every family in Nebraska were farmers.
The first ten years of their marriage they lived in Fairmont City, NE and then at least the next 40 years in Mitchell, NE which is just west of Scottsbluff.

Note that the last name of Evans is not the same Evans clan as that of Sarah and Simon Evans.




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