Profile

EVANS, Owen
(Service number 13461)

Aliases
First Rank	Trooper	Last Rank	Sergeant Major

Birth

Date	25/06/1894	Place of Birth	Maerewhenua, Oamaru

Enlistment Information

Date	11 November 1915	Age	21 years
Address at Enlistment	C/- K F Read, Te Araroa
Occupation	Farrier
Previous Military Experience	Oamaru Senior Cadets
Marital Status	Single
Next of Kin	Mrs M. EVANS (mother), 14 Wellington Street, Timaru; 9 Hereford Street, Timaru
Religion	Church of England
Medical Information	Height 5 feet 9 inches. Weight 163 lbs. Chest measurement 37-41 inches. Complexion dark. Eyes grey. Hair black. Sight - both eyes D=24. Hearing & colour vision both normal. Limbs well formed. ull & perfect movement of all joints. Chest well formed. Heart & lungs normal. Teeth good. Free from hernia, varicocele, varicose veins, haemorrhoids, inveterate or contagious skin disease. No vaccination mark. Good bodily & mental health. No slight defects.

Military Service

Served with	NZ Armed Forces	Served in	Army
Military District

Embarkation Information

Body on Embarkation	New Zealand Expeditionary Force
Unit, Squadron, or Ship	4th Squad, Auckland Mounted Rifles
Date	4 March 1916
Transport	Aparima
Embarked From	Wellington	Destination	Suez, Egypt

Other Units Served With
Last Unit Served With	Auckland Mounted Rifles

Military Awards

Campaigns	Western European
Service Medals	British War Medal, Victory Medal
Military Awards

Award Circumstances and Date

No information

Prisoner of War Information

Date of Capture
Where Captured and by Whom
Actions Prior to Capture
PoW Serial Number
PoW Camps
Days Interned
Liberation Date

Discharge

Date	27 February 1919	Reason	On account of illness contracted on Active Service (malaria).

Hospitals, Wounds, Diseases and Illnesses

Minor illiness, Apr 1917, Malaria Oct 1918

Post-war Occupations

Blacksmith

Death

Date	4 May 1954	Age	59 years
Place of Death	Levels, Timaru
Cause
Notices	Timaru Herald, 6 May 1954
Memorial or Cemetery	Timaru Cemetery
Memorial Reference	Services Section, Row 114, Plot 9
New Zealand Memorials

Biographical Notes

Owen Evans was born on 25 June 1894 at Maerewhenua near Oamaru, the third son of Thomas and Mary Evans (née Attiwell). Thomas and Mary were married on 11 October 1883 in Oamaru. The family moved to Timaru in 1910 where Mary Evans ran a tea rooms in Timaru called the Kia Ora Tea Rooms, near the Theatre Royal.

Owen married Edith May Cartwright in 1923 and the couple had three children. Owen was known for his golfing ability and a trophy was donated to the Pleasant Point Golf Club. He is recorded as club captain of the Pleasant Point Golf Club in the 1930s.

Owen died in Timaru on 4 May 1954, aged 59, and was buried in the services section of the Timaru Cemetery. Edith died in 1970 and was cremated at Salisbury Park. Three other brothers also served in World War One: Eyre Llewellyn Evans, who was killed in action in 1918 in France, Harold Thomas Evans, and of Hugh McAlpine Evans.

Sources

Auckland War Memorial Museum Cenotaph Database [22 December 2016]; NZ Defence Force Personnel Records (Archives NZ Ref. AABK 18805 W5537 0038424) [06 January 2017]; NZ BDM Indexes (Department of Internal Affairs) [23 December 2016] - not all detail entered; Timaru Cemetery headstone image (Timaru District Council) [22 December 2016]; NZ Electoral Rolls (ancestry.com.au) [28 December 2016]; Timaru Herald, 6 may 1954 (Timaru District library) [30 December 2016]; SCRoll web submission by R Evans, 4 August 2019

External Links

Researched and Written by

Teresa Scott, SC branch NZSG

Currently Assigned to

Licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License unless otherwise stated.