Yes, I have usually accepted that the Mary Roberts living in Yellow Springs with her husband and father, named William James, are the sister and father of Gad, who emigrated when he did.
Yes, the above biography is the correct Gad James. He is well documented in eastern Iowa. One item of that biography is in question. I have never located brother Stephen.
You found the family in Macon! I hadn't seen that, thanks.
Regarding which branch of the family changed their name -- I agree, the single man leaving his family for a life in the far west is the more logical one to decide to change his name. The story his descendants tell goes like this: Well after John Evans's death, when his great grandchildren started to ask questions about his origins, they heard one family fact he told someone. "I used to have a brother named Gad, but he changed his name to James." Reasonably enough, everyone assumed he meant his brother changed his first name. They left it at that until one day recently when someone decided to google "Gad to James Evans." What they found was a lot of documentation on Gad James, and they realized there were enough correspondences to guess this could be their ancestor's brother. (Not that I believed it, heh.) So, going by that story, it sounds like Evans was the original surname.
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Yes, I have usually accepted that the Mary Roberts living in Yellow Springs with her husband and father, named William James, are the sister and father of Gad, who emigrated when he did.
Yes, the above biography is the correct Gad James. He is well documented in eastern Iowa. One item of that biography is in question. I have never located brother Stephen.
You found the family in Macon! I hadn't seen that, thanks.
Regarding which branch of the family changed their name -- I agree, the single man leaving his family for a life in the far west is the more logical one to decide to change his name. The story his descendants tell goes like this: Well after John Evans's death, when his great grandchildren started to ask questions about his origins, they heard one family fact he told someone. "I used to have a brother named Gad, but he changed his name to James." Reasonably enough, everyone assumed he meant his brother changed his first name. They left it at that until one day recently when someone decided to google "Gad to James Evans." What they found was a lot of documentation on Gad James, and they realized there were enough correspondences to guess this could be their ancestor's brother. (Not that I believed it, heh.) So, going by that story, it sounds like Evans was the original surname.