van William Jones was born in Aberdare, Wales, in 1880 and Bronwen Morgan was born in Kirksville, Iowa in 1887. They were married in l906 in Ravensdale, Washington. After living in many coal-mining towns, in 1917 they came to Anchorage, where Evan became the superintendent of the Doherty Mine on Moose Creek. He later became superintendent of the Eska and Chickaloon Mines, which were owned by the Alaska Railroad.

In 1920, Evan organized the Evan Jones Coal Company with five other Anchorage investors, including Oscar Anderson. The family then moved from Eska to Jonesville. Jones sold his interests in Jonesville shortly thereafter, and moved to Healy to manage the Healy River Coal Company for Austin E. “Cap” Lathrop. After that, Jones returned to the Eska, Jonesville and Wishbone Hill mines. His last mining enterprise was in 1946, when he started developing the Homer Coal Company in Homer. He died in that small Kenai Peninsula community in 1950.

Evan and Bronwen Jones had six children. Their two sons died at birth, and four daughters survived. The first, Vanny, was born in 1908 in Connelsville, Missouri and Vivian was born in 1911. Their third and fourth daughters were born in Alaska: Martha Bernice in 1921 and Margaret in 1925.

Bronwen supported Evan in all of his mining efforts and put up with the primitive life style that she faced in the mining camps, raising the children and making a good home wherever she was. After Evan’s death, his widow lived in Wasilla with her daughter, Vivian Teeland. Eventually, Bronwen Jones moved into the Pioneer Home in Palmer, where she passed away in 1980. Bronwen and Evan Jones are buried in the Anchorage Memorial Park.

Vanny, the oldest daughter of Evan and Bronwen Jones, married Ralph Courtnay, whose family is also among those listed as Anchorage pioneers. They had a son, Ralph W., Jr., born in 1938, and a daughter, Bronwen, born in 1944. Ralph suffered from Addison’s disease for many years, and the family moved many times in search of a climate more suitable for him. He died in 1948, after which Vanny took a job teaching in a one-room school in Healy. There, she met and married Lawrence Davenport. After a few years in Healy, they moved back to Anchorage, where Vanny worked for the National Bank of Alaska and as a librarian at the bank’s Alaska Heritage Library. Lawrence died in 1974, and Vanny spent the last ten years of her life in the Anchorage Pioneer Home. She died in 1996.

Vivian Jones married Walter Teeland, another son of an Anchorage pioneer family. They had three children. Colleen, Walter and Larry. Martha Bernice Jones Visger had four children; Frank, Margaret, Jeff and Sally. The youngest daughter, Margaret B. Jones Bennett, had three children; Richard, Evan and Joanne.