Author: THOMAS, Evan
Biography:
THOMAS, Evan (1732-1814: DWB)
A Welsh-speaker, he also published translations and editions in Welsh as Ieuan Fardd Dhu. The son of John Thomas, he was born in Llanfair, Montgomeryshire and was probably the child of that name who was baptised on 27 Feb. 1731/2. His mother's name is not known. He was trained as a printer and his knowledge of Welsh led to his employment in English newspaper offices. For example, he supervised publication of all Welsh language material for Thomas Wood of the Shrewsbury Chronicle. He married Ellen Parry at St. Chad's, Shrewsbury, on 15 June 1766. It is not known if they had children and it is possible there was a second marriage, also at St. Chad's, in 1775. He is said to have been in Carmarthen in about 1767 and there both he and his father contributed to the Eurgrawn Cymraeg, the first Welsh magazine. He was in Devizes, Wiltshire, in 1776 when he published an almanac; by then he had started calling himself an astronomer (that is, an astrologer) who could tell fortunes and had knowledge of the future. Several sources attribute the decline in his own fortunes to his drinking and he ended his days in the Shrewsbury House of Industry (workhouse) where he died on 12 Jan. 1814. With Thomas Wood of Shrewsbury he wrote and published Game-Laws; An Abstract of an Act (1784; includes a poem by Thomas) and Abstracts of the Following Acts of Parliament... (1785). He typically gave his name on title pages as "E. Thomas, Astronomer, F. S. A. B."; the latter stands for Fellow of the Society of Ancient Britons. (DWB; ancestry.co.uk 24 June 2025; Shrewsbury Chronicle 14 Jan. 1814; T. R. Roberts, Eminent Welshmen [1908]) SR