Person:Evan Morgan (9)

Excerpt: "Evan Morgan was a wealthy merchant of Philadelphia, and previous to settling there lived for a time at Chester, Pennsylvania. He owned many houses and considerable tracts of land, as his will, filed in 1748, and the notice of his executors, Samuel Hazard and Thomas Morgan, show, and he was a partner of John Abraham de Normandie in the Mount Holly Iron Works, the first iron works started in America.
Evan Morgan lived at the corner of Market and Second Streets, and was the friend, as well as the neighbor, of Benjamin Franklin. This intimacy was continued in the second generation, and later in the career of the lad who grew up in the shadow of greatness it was abundantly manifested, when Franklin was an agent of the Colonies in London and his young neighbor was a student of medicine in Edinburgh.

The children of David Morgan and his legacy © Susan Taylor Aldridge Excerpt: "Evan MORGAN b: 1700 - married Joanna Biles in 1724 in Chester/Delaware, Pa, grand-daughter of William Biles, one of the earliest Quaker settlers of Bucks County, who had preceded William Penn to America. Spendlove Leatham Genealogy William Biles was a justice of the Upland Court, and it was at this house that the first known meeting of Friends at the Falls of Neshaminy was held in 1683. Of Joann's great-grandfather Blackshaw, family tradition states that he was a country gentlemen of Cheshire, who commanded a company in the army of Charles I. Randall Blackshaw, son of the Cavalier captain, became a Quaker and , in 1682, migrated to America, where he purchased 1,500 acres of land near the Falls of Neshaminy. "

per John A Craig, 2001:

... EVAN MORGAN, son of David Morgan, friend of Washington, and friend and neighbor of Benjamin Franklin, was born in Wales, emigrated with his father and at least one brother to Pennsylvania, about 1717. He became a wealthy merchant of Philadelphia. Evan Morgan married Joanna Biles, daughter of George Biles and Martha Blackshaw of Bucks Coiunty, Pa., in 1724. Her grandfather William Biles came to America in 1679, on the ship "Elizabeth and Sarah," and Randall Blackshaw, father of Martha, came on the ship "Submission" in 1682. The latter held some 1,500 acres of the five thousand acres puchased of William Penn by James Harrison. His father was Captain Randall Blackshaw, of Hollongee, in Cheshire, England, an officer in the army of Charles during the Great Rebellion.
Joanna (Biles) Morgan died in childbirth in 1743, at Philadelphia. She and Evan Morgan had nine children. When Evan died in 1748, he left his children well provided for...his property was considerable, aside from his business and his iron interst, and the profits from these latter were invested for the benefit of his sons until they should come of age. ..
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[Temporarily posted pending primary sources.]