Historic Resources Committee

My grandparents (I. Newton Evans Sr. and Mae Littlefield Evans) and my parents (I. Newton Evans Jr. and Evelyn Pannebaker Evans) purchased a 132-acre farm in 1946. My parents were then married on April 20, 1946 at St. Matthew’s Lutheran Church.

Before purchasing this farm to support both families, my grandparents and father had lived on another farm (previously owned by Charles and Ruth Pennypacker) on Route 401 just north of Fellowship Road, in Uwchland Township, which now has a wood cabin front.

Their first dwelling on the farm was a converted spring house, affectionately named by my mother as “the bungalow”. The “bungalow” sat directly across St. Matthew’s Road from the farm house and was removed when Matthew’s Meadows was developed. As our family grew to be three children (1956), we moved into the farm house and my grandparents rehabbed the house that is now known as The Gottier, at the corner of Malehorn Road and St. Matthew’s Road.

The date on the stone portion of the farm house is 1832; and, I suspect that the stone portion of the barn would have been built at the same time. I remember my mother showing me a place at the bottom of our cellar steps where a piece of plaster had fallen off the wall and a log was visible. We suspect that there was a log house and probably a log barn on the site before the stone one was built.

Our farm had been cited in the book, “History of Chester County, With Genealogical and Biographical Sketches”, co-authored by Gilbert Cope and J. Smith Futhey, 1881. The owners at that time were the Woodwards . We cherish our family copy of the book each time we visit my brother in Maryland.