horace evans
1882-1967
Life Story
Born in Lawrence
Horace Evans was born on August 29, 1882, in Lawrence, Newton County, Mississippi, the son of Ben Evans and Nancy Watkins Evans.¹ His father had been born around 1839, before the Civil War, while his mother was born around 1854. Horace therefore belonged to the first generations of the Evans family born into freedom after emancipation.
By 1900, seventeen-year-old Horace was living with his parents in Beat 4 of Newton County. The household included his siblings William, Frank, Lola, Johnie, and Mamie. His father, Ben, was a farmer, and the family lived on a farm in the Lawrence area.¹
Horace was already working outside the household as a day laborer. The census also recorded that he could read and write.¹
Those seemingly simple facts provide an early picture of the young man he was becoming: a literate teenager already earning wages while growing up in an agricultural household.
Farming would eventually become the central occupation of his life.
Marriage and a Farm of His Own
Around 1905, Horace married a woman named Nancy.²
By 1910, the couple was living in Beat 4, Newton County. Horace, then in his late twenties, had made an important transition from the day laborer recorded a decade earlier. He was now operating a general farm on his own account. Even more significantly, the census indicated that Horace owned his farm free of mortgage.²
For a Black farmer in early twentieth-century Mississippi, landownership carried particular significance. The decades following emancipation had left many African American agricultural workers trapped in systems of tenancy and sharecropping. Owning land outright offered a degree of economic independence and permanence that was far from guaranteed.
Horace had achieved that position while still a relatively young man.
Living with Horace and Nancy in 1910 was their twelve-year-old nephew, Ore McFarland.² His presence shows that the Evans household extended beyond the married couple and included members of their wider family network.
World War I and the Lawrence Red Cross Auxiliary
The First World War brought another dimension to Horace’s documented life.
Horace registered for the military draft in Newton County during the World War I era. His registration card confirmed his birth date as August 29, 1882, and described him as a man of medium height and medium build, with black hair and dark eyes.³
But another surviving record places Horace within a larger story of African American community participation during the war.
On January 10, 1918, The Newton Record published an article announcing that approximately one thousand people had enrolled in Red Cross auxiliaries throughout Newton County. Among the organizations listed was the Lawrence Auxiliary, whose membership was divided in the newspaper by race.
Under the heading “Colored Members” appeared the name Horace Evans.⁴
His enrollment provides a rare glimpse beyond the farm and census household. At a time when Mississippi’s public life was rigidly segregated, Black residents of Lawrence were nevertheless participating in organized wartime relief efforts within their own auxiliary.
Horace was among them.
The newspaper record does not tell us precisely what duties he performed or how actively he participated, so those details should not be assumed. What it does establish is that in 1918 Horace joined other African American residents of the Lawrence community whose names were enrolled with the Red Cross auxiliary.⁴
A Landowner in the Lawrence Community
After the war, Horace returned to the agricultural life that had already become well established.
In 1920, Horace and Nancy were still living in Beat 4 and still owned their farm free of mortgage.⁵
One version of the census index gives Horace’s age as 87, an obvious conflict with his documented 1882 birth date and with the surrounding census records. Whether the error originated with the enumeration or later transcription, the age is inconsistent with the larger body of evidence and should not be taken literally.⁵
The more important fact is the continuity.
Ten years after the 1910 census, Horace still possessed the farm.
By 1930, Horace and Nancy remained in Beat 4, still living on property they owned and continuing their agricultural life.⁶
Their household that year also included Thomas Monroe, Nancy’s father and Horace’s father-in-law, who was recorded as 97 years old.⁶
His presence gives us another glimpse into the way Horace and Nancy’s household functioned across generations.
Twenty years earlier, their home had included twelve-year-old nephew Ore McFarland. Now, in 1930, their household included Nancy’s elderly father.
The records therefore reveal Horace and Nancy’s home at two very different stages of extended family life: first sharing it with a young nephew and later with an elderly parent.
While the census cannot tell us the everyday circumstances behind these arrangements, it does show that their household provided a home for members of the extended family at both ends of the age spectrum.
Decades on the Same Land
The 1940 census gives an especially useful glimpse into Horace’s working life as he entered his later years.
Horace and Nancy were living along Highway 80 near Lawrence, and Horace continued operating his farm.⁷ The census recorded that he had completed approximately the third grade.
Despite limited formal schooling, Horace had been recorded as able to read and write as early as 1900.¹ His life therefore illustrates an important distinction between formal educational attainment and literacy among African Americans who came of age in rural Mississippi around the turn of the twentieth century.
The 1940 census also reported that Horace had worked 52 weeks during 1939.⁷
By then, farming was not simply an occupation he had recently entered. It represented decades of continuity. The seventeen-year-old day laborer of 1900 had become a farmer and landowner whose working life remained tied to the Lawrence landscape year after year.
Loss of Nancy and Life Alone
By 1950, Horace’s household had changed dramatically.
Nancy was no longer there.
The census recorded Horace as widowed, living alone on his farm off Old Highway 80 between Hazel and Lawrence.⁸ He was 68 years old and still working as a farmer in his own business.⁸
Nearly fifty years had passed since the 1900 census found him living in his father’s household and working as a day laborer.
Now Horace was the head of his own household, living on the land he had spent decades cultivating.
The record does not tell us exactly when Nancy died, but her absence by 1950 marked the end of a marriage that had lasted for several decades.
Horace nevertheless continued farming.
A Lifetime in Lawrence
Horace Evans died on October 15, 1967, in Lawrence, Mississippi. He was 85 years old.⁹
His documented life had remained remarkably geographically consistent.
Lawrence was where he was born in 1882.
It was where he grew up in Ben and Nancy Evans’s farming household.
It was where he became a landowner.
It was where he and his wife Nancy built their life together.
It was where he joined the local Red Cross auxiliary during World War I.
And it was where his life ended eighty-five years after it began.
From Day Laborer to Independent Farmer
Horace Evans’s life tells a different kind of story from those of later generations who left rural Mississippi for cities across the country.
His was a story of staying, owning, and cultivating.
At seventeen, Horace was a day laborer living on his father’s farm. Within approximately a decade, he was operating his own general farm. More importantly, the census described him as owning that property free of mortgage.
He kept it.
Census after census places Horace in the same general Lawrence landscape, continuing to farm land that he owned. Even after Nancy’s death, when the 1950 census found him living alone at age 68, he remained a self-employed farmer.
His 1918 enrollment in the Lawrence Red Cross auxiliary adds another dimension. Horace was not simply a name attached to a piece of farmland. He was also one of the African American men and women of Lawrence who participated in an organized community response during World War I.
Taken together, the records trace an extraordinary span of continuity: from a young Black day laborer born less than twenty years after emancipation to an independent landowning farmer who remained rooted in Lawrence for the rest of his life.
For Horace Evans, the land was not merely where he worked.
It was where he built his independence, where he made his home, and where he spent a lifetime.
Resting Place
Unknown
Photos/Albums
Sources
- 1900 U.S. census, Newton County, Mississippi, Beat 4, population schedule, sheet 10, dwelling 174, family 175, household of Ben Evans; Horace Evans, age 17, born August 1882 in Mississippi, day laborer, able to read and write; digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed 2026.
- 1910 U.S. census, Newton County, Mississippi, Beat 4, enumeration district 91, sheet 4B, household of “Harace” Evans; Horace Evans, age 27, general farmer, and wife Nancy Evans; farm recorded as owned free of mortgage; household also included Ore McFarland, age 12, identified as Horace’s nephew; digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed 2026.
- “U.S., World War I Draft Registration Cards, 1917–1918,” registration for Horace Evans, Newton County, Mississippi, born August 29, 1882; described as medium height and medium build, with black hair and dark eyes; digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed 2026.
- “One Thousand Names Enrolled in County,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), January 10, 1918, 6. Horace Evans was listed among the “Colored Members” of the Lawrence Red Cross Auxiliary.
- 1920 U.S. census, Newton County, Mississippi, Beat 4, population schedule, household of Horace Evans and wife Nancy Evans; Horace recorded with an anomalous age of 87; farm recorded as owned free of mortgage; digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed 2026.
- 1930 U.S. census, Newton County, Mississippi, Beat 4, population schedule, dwelling 407, family 420, household of Horace Evans; Horace Evans, farmer, and wife Nancy Evans; household also included Thomas Monroe, age 97, identified as Horace’s father-in-law; digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed 2026.
- 1940 U.S. census, Newton County, Mississippi, Highway 80 near Lawrence, population schedule, sheet 3B, household 51, household of Horace Evans; Horace recorded as a farmer, with approximately three years of formal schooling and 52 weeks worked during 1939; digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed 2026.
- 1950 U.S. census, Newton County, Mississippi, population schedule, dwelling 126, off Old Highway 80 between Hazel and Lawrence; Horace Evans, age 68, widowed, living alone and working as a farmer in his own business; digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed 2026.
- “U.S., Social Security Applications and Claims Index, 1936–2007,” and Social Security death record, entry for Horace Evans, born August 29, 1882, Lawrence, Mississippi; died October 15, 1967, Lawrence, Mississippi; digital database, Ancestry.com, accessed 2026.
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