lola evans bobbett
1888-bef. 1954
Life Story
Early Life in the Evans Family
Lola Evans was born in June 1888 in Mississippi, the daughter of Ben Evans and Nancy Watkins Evans.¹ She grew up in Beat 4 of Newton County in a large African American farming family whose roots were deeply established in the Lawrence community.
By 1900, eleven-year-old Lola was living with her parents and siblings William, Horace, Frank, Johnie, and Mamie Evans. Her father, Ben, was a farmer, while several of the children contributed their labor to the household. Lola herself was already recorded as a farm laborer.¹
The census offers only a brief glimpse of her childhood, but it places Lola squarely within the agricultural world that shaped the lives of Ben and Nancy’s children. Her brothers William, Horace, and Frank were also working by this time, and agriculture would continue to influence the family’s economic life for decades.
In 1904, Lola’s father, Ben Evans, died. His death came as Lola was entering young adulthood and left Nancy a widow.
Within a short time, Lola would begin a household of her own.
Marriage to Albert Bobbett
Around 1905, Lola married Albert Bobbett, Jr., whose surname appears in some records as Bobit.²
By 1910, Albert and Lola were living in Beat 4 of Newton County. The census recorded that they had been married approximately five years. Their household included two young children, daughter Clara and son Lester, whose name appears as “Lesta” in the 1910 record.²
The census also preserves evidence of considerable sorrow during Lola’s first years of marriage. Lola reported that she had given birth to four children, but only two were still living.²
This means that by her early twenties, Lola had already experienced the deaths of two children. Their names are not provided by the census, and unless vital or cemetery records are eventually located, these two children may remain largely absent from the family’s documented history.
Also living with Albert and Lola in 1910 was Lola’s nephew, Alex Evans, age twenty, the son of her brother Tom Jefferson Evans.² His presence in the Bobbett household provides another glimpse of the extended-family relationships that connected the Evans families of Beat 4. Rather than consisting only of Albert, Lola, and their children, their home also provided a place for a member of Lola’s extended family.
A Growing Family
Despite the losses of her early married years, Lola’s family continued to grow.
By 1920, she appeared in the census as “Lula Bobbett,” another variation of her given name. She and Albert remained in Beat 4 with their children.³
Their household included daughters Clara and Annie L., and sons Lester, Horace and Cornelius.³
The census therefore captures a much fuller household than the one recorded ten years earlier.
Other vital and family records associate Lola and Albert with additional children, including Elizabeth Bobbett.⁴ These records suggest that, similar to many families from this period, the federal census alone might not capture the full history of all the children born to the couple.
Lola’s own experience had already demonstrated this. Two children reported in 1910 had died before that census and consequently disappeared from later household enumerations.
Forty Acres in Newton County
One of the most significant records concerning Lola and Albert appears in Newton County’s land and financial records.
On December 1, 1927, Albert Bobbett, Jr. and his wife, Lola Bobbett, executed a deed of trust securing an indebtedness involving a 40-acre tract in Newton County.⁵
The property was legally described as the:
**Southwest Quarter of the Northwest Quarter of Section 30, Township 6 North, Range 11 East.**⁵
The deed of trust was recorded in Mortgage Land Book 24, page 85, in the office of the Chancery Clerk of Newton County.⁵
The document is important because it connects Lola by name to a specific tract of land. It also provides evidence of the financial arrangements that could accompany rural landholding. Property was not merely a place to live and farm; it could also be pledged as security for debt.
For Black families in early twentieth-century Mississippi, acquiring and maintaining an interest in land represented an important form of economic stability, but ownership did not eliminate financial risk.
Lola and Albert would eventually confront that reality.
Financial Trouble and a Scheduled Sale
Nearly eight years after the deed of trust was executed, a legal notice concerning the property appeared in The Newton Record.
On May 9, 1935, the newspaper published a “Notice of Sale” stating that Albert and Lola had defaulted in the performance of the conditions secured by the deed of trust.⁵
Substituted trustee W. W. James announced that the 40-acre tract would be offered for public sale at the Newton County courthouse door in Decatur on May 17, 1935.⁵
The notice appeared during the Great Depression, a period of severe economic hardship for farming families throughout Mississippi. Agricultural prices had fallen, credit could be difficult to obtain, and rural families across the South struggled with debt.
However, the historical setting should not be confused with evidence about Lola and Albert personally. The surviving notice does not explain why they defaulted, and it would be speculation to attribute their financial difficulties directly to the Depression without additional documentation.
Likewise, the notice establishes that the land was scheduled for public auction, but it does not by itself prove that the sale actually took place.
A later trustee’s deed or other land record would be necessary to determine whether the property was sold, who acquired it, and whether Lola and Albert permanently lost their interest in the 40 acres.
What the record does establish is that by 1935, property associated with their household had been placed at risk because the conditions of the debt had not been satisfied.
The Uncertain Final Years of Lola’s Life
After the 1935 trustee-sale notice, Lola becomes much more difficult to follow in the surviving records presently available.
By 1940, Albert Bobbett was living with a different wife.⁶
That record establishes that Albert’s marriage to Lola had ended sometime before the 1940 census, but it does not establish how the marriage ended.
Lola may have died.
Lola and Albert may have divorced.
Or circumstances not yet documented may have separated them.
For that reason, Albert’s later marriage should not be used by itself as evidence of Lola’s death.
There is, however, reason to continue investigating the possibility that Lola died before her mother.
Nancy Evans lived to an exceptionally advanced age and did not die until 1954. By then, a number of her children had already predeceased her.⁷ Family research suggests that Lola may have been among them, but a death certificate, obituary, cemetery record, probate document, or other contemporary source has not yet been located that establishes Lola’s date of death.
Until such evidence is found, the date and circumstances of Lola Evans Bobbett’s death remain unknown.
A Daughter, Wife, Mother, and Woman Connected to the Land
Although the final chapter of Lola’s life remains unresolved, the records that survive tell us considerably more than simply when and where she appeared in a census.
She was born into Ben and Nancy Evans’s farming household in the late nineteenth century and was working as a farm laborer while still a child.
She lost her father as a young woman.
She married Albert Bobbett and established a household of her own in the same Newton County community where she had been raised.
She became a mother repeatedly and endured the deaths of at least two children before 1910. Yet the family continued to grow, and by 1920 Lola was surrounded by sons and daughters.
Her name later became connected to 40 acres of Newton County land, providing another link between the Evans family and Black landholding in the Lawrence area.
But the 1935 trustee-sale notice reveals the other side of that history.
Land could represent independence and security, but when property was pledged against debt, it could also become vulnerable. Lola and Albert’s experience demonstrates that the story of African American landownership cannot be understood simply by identifying who acquired property. The ability to retain that land across periods of economic difficulty was equally important.
And then Lola’s documentary trail grows quiet.
Albert’s appearance with another wife in 1940 tells us that something had changed, but it does not tell us what happened to Lola. Rather than filling that silence with an assumption, her biography must presently leave the question open.
That uncertainty does not diminish her life.
Lola Evans Bobbett was one of the daughters of Ben and Nancy Evans who came of age in the farming communities of Newton County. She became a wife and mother, endured the loss of children, raised a growing family, and became connected through surviving legal records to a specific piece of Mississippi land.
Her story remains unfinished only because the records have not yet revealed its final chapter.
Resting Place
Unknown
Photos/Albums
Sources
- 1. 1900 U.S. census, Newton County, Mississippi, Beat 4, population schedule, sheet 10, dwelling 174, family 175, household of Ben Evans; Lola Evans, age 11, born June 1888 in Mississippi, daughter and farm laborer; household included her parents, Ben and Nancy Evans, and siblings William, Horace, Frank, Johnie, and Mamie; digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed 2026.
- 2. 1910 U.S. census, Newton County, Mississippi, Beat 4, population schedule, enumeration district 93, sheet 18A, household of Albert Bobit; Albert Bobit, age 25, and wife Lola Bobit, age 23, married approximately five years; Lola reported four children born and two children living; their surviving children in the household were daughter Clara and son Lester, whose name was recorded as “Lesta.” Also residing in the household was Alex Evans, age 20, identified in the census as a nephew; family records identify Alex as the son of Lola’s brother Tom Jefferson Evans; digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed 2026.
- 3. 1920 U.S. census, Newton County, Mississippi, Beat 4, population schedule, household of Albert Bobbett; Albert Bobbett, age 40, and wife “Lula” Bobbett, age 37; children in the household were Clara, daughter, age 14; Lester, son, age 12; Annie L., daughter, age 10; Horace, son, age 8; and Cornelius, son, age 6; digital image, Ancestry.com, accessed 2026.
- 4. Mississippi vital and family-record indexes, entries for Lola Bobbett/Lola Evans, with maiden-name variations Even/Evans; spouse Albert Bobbett. Records include Horace Bobbett, certificate no. 10997, who is the same son enumerated with Albert and Lola in the 1920 census, and Elizabeth Bobbett. Elizabeth’s relationship to the children reported by Lola in the 1910 census requires further research before a definitive total number of children can be established; digital database, Ancestry.com, accessed 2026.
- 5. “Notice of Sale,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), May 9, 1935, 4. The notice states that Albert Bobbett, Jr. and wife Lola Bobbett executed a deed of trust on December 1, 1927, securing an indebtedness, recorded in Mortgage Land Book 24, p. 85, Newton County Chancery Clerk’s Office. Following default in the performance of the conditions of the deed of trust, substituted trustee W. W. James advertised the property for public sale at the Newton County courthouse in Decatur on May 17, 1935. The property was described as the SW¼ of the NW¼ of Section 30, Township 6 North, Range 11 East, containing approximately 40 acres. The appointment of the substituted trustee was recorded in Deed of Trust Book 35, p. 132.
- 6. 1940 U.S. census, Newton County, Mississippi, population schedule, household of Albert Bobbett; Albert Bobbett was enumerated with a wife other than Lola. The record establishes that Albert’s marriage to Lola had ended by 1940 but does not, by itself, establish whether the marriage ended through Lola’s death, divorce, or another circumstance.
- 7. “Former Slave Dies at Advanced Age,” The Newton Record (Newton, Mississippi), November 18, 1954, 3, obituary for Nancy Evans, mother of Lola Evans Bobbett. Nancy survived a number of her children. Until additional documentation specifically establishes Lola’s death, Nancy’s obituary and other family evidence should be used only as supporting evidence for further investigation and not as proof of Lola’s date or circumstances of death.
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