David Evans (87)

Election date: 1768 (Elected to the American Society. Resigned, April 6, 1770 to devote his energies to Quakerism.)

David Evans (1733–20 April 1817) was a house carpenter and a member of the American Philosophical Society, elected in 1768. Born into a Quaker family in Gwynedd, Pennsylvania, he was apprenticed to a carpenter in Philadelphia. In early adulthood, he was a member of the Carpenters’ Company and Union Library Company and a director of the Library Company of Philadelphia. But around 1770 he resigned from all of these organizations, including the APS, when a sudden religious conversion convinced him to devote his energies to the Society of Friends. Evans held a number of important positions in the Philadelphia Monthly Meeting for the Southern District. Though he played no role in the American Revolution, he did assist with fundraising for those affected by the British blockade of Boston in 1775 and personally delivered the sizeable donation. In 1774 he collected subscriptions for John Woolman’s Journal, a major Quaker antislavery text. And in 1784 he was named an elder of the Monthly Meeting, a position that involved drafting public statements of Quaker positions. During this time he continued his activities as a carpenter, building or remodeling homes for APS members John Cadwalader and John Dickinson as well as the Friends School on Pine Street and the nearby meetinghouse. Other significant carpentry projects included the new Library Company building and the APS’s own Philosophical Hall. In 1789 he was elected to the Philadelphia City Council, where he oversaw the construction of a new city hall. And in 1794, he superintended the construction of the Pennsylvania Hospital’s new west wing and began surveying buildings for the Insurance Company of North America. (PI)

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