Bio- Sawyers
SURNAMES: TRUEMAN, REYNOLD, TOPHAM

A pioneer whose life and work have left a deep and abiding impress on his day was Francis Marion Evans, a native of Missouri, where he was born on January 19, 1837. His father, Josiah Evans, was a frontiersman and a farmer, who had married Miss Cavery Ann Smith; and when the lad was twelve years old, his parents set out across the rough country to California and soon settled in the Placerville district, where Mr. Evans mined for a number of years. In time the family migrated further to Santa Clara County and there, east of Milpitas, they found part of the old Tularcitos grant, which took their fancy; and Mr. Evans purchased 500 acres of the grant, buying it twice, in reality, on account of a dispute in the title. He set out ten acres to prunes, and devoted the balance of the land to general farming. The land proved a good investment, and the past season twelve acres have been devoted to the cultivation of tomatoes, and round about the home, which was erected on the ranch in 1870, stock, grain, hay and seed are raised. 

There were four children in the family, Francis being the eldest. He attended the grammar schools in Missouri, and completed his schooling in California, but the demands of a busy life precluded his carrying studies beyond the lower grades. At San Jose, on December 12, 1869, he married Miss Lydia R. Trueman, a native of New Brunswick, Canada. and the daughter of Marcus and Rebecca (Reynold) Trueman, who brought her to California in 1868 by way of the Panama route. They stopped for a while in San Francisco, then Mr. Trueman took up farming, and after that he engaged in undertaking {transcribers note- TRUEMAN and WOODROW Undertakers}. He lived to be eighty-three years old, and his good wife breathed her last when past eighty. 

 Mr. Evans built an attractive home on an elevation commanding the valley below, and on that beautiful spot he and his wife reared a family of six children: George, Nellie, Ann, Mrs. Topham, Elizabeth, C. J. and Arthur. Francis Marion Evans, who was a standpat but broadminded Republican who exerted the best of influence in politics, died on November 26, 1915, particularly honored by his fellow-members of the Pioneers and Grangers of Santa Clara County.

Transcribed cferoben, from Eugene T. Sawyers' History of Santa Clara County,California,  published by Historic Record Co. , 1922. page 581

SANTA CLARA COUNTY PIONEER BIOGRAPHIES

SANTA CLARA HISTORY