BEVIN, PHILIP: 1811-1890.
Philip Bevin was born in New Port, England, Feb. 27, 1811, where records in his diary reveal that he was apprenticed at the age of seventeen to learn the carpenter trade and architecture. However, he did not like this work and in the year 1834 he sailed for the United States and arrived in Philadelphia. Soon after his arrival he made a trip down the Ohio River to Natchez and stopped at New Orleans and Cincinnati for a short time.
In the year 1836 he returned to England and married Elizabeth Ablard, the daughter of the man to whom he had been apprenticed.
In the year 1843, Bevin, with his wife and son, sailed from Liverpool to America. After arriving he was attracted by the opportunities offered by the new West and on Oct. 24 he arrived in Jackson County, Ia. He lived there two years, during which time he was engaged in farming and was also a minister of a newly organized church.
After the death of his wife he decided to devote his entire life to the ministry. During 1846 he entered Lane Theological Seminary in Cincinnati to prepare himself for his chosen profession. He was graduated from the Seminary in June, 1849. The rest of his life was spent in Indiana in the service of the Presbyterian Church in Southern Indiana. He lived during this period in Jefferson County, Jeffersonville, Byrnsville, Leavenworth, and Martinsburg, where he died Apr. 3, 1890.
In addition to the four known publications listed below, he left approximately twenty manuscripts (preserved in the Americana collection of W. E. Wilson), some of which may have been published but not recorded. During the period of twenty-five years of his residence in Indiana, he was a regular contributor of poems to local newspapers and religious magazines.
Information supplied by W. E. Wilson.
- America. A Poem. Cincinnati,
1848.
- Woman, Lost and Gained; or, The Island of the
Innocent. Cincinnati, 1875.
- Songs of the War for the Union, The Mystic Isle …
Cincinnati, 1887.
- Adalia: The Sinless World. n.p., n.d.
