Court Arms/ Farmers Arms/ Blue Bell Inn

[ilbcnyou]

My great-great grandfather was John Evans, who was born in Merthyr Tydfil and immigrated to US in the late 1800s. Married a girl from state of Illinois, and moved west to the Idaho territory. Soon after he was accused of murder and left his life in Idaho and his family and returned to Wales. I have a picture that is supposedly him standing in front of his pub, the "CourtArms". It's on a corner, and says WineVault? above the door. He supposedly remarried in Wales and had a son Sydney Evans (and from a picture a harp player). The census of 1901 shows him as an innkeeper with an instrumental musician and a vocalist as boarders.

This ring a bell with anyone? I did see there was a Court Arms on the corner of High Street and Swan. Is it still there? Is there a photo? Thanks... we've been looking for a long time. This is an amazing website. By the way, it doesn't look like he murdered anyone and from the research I've done, looks like when and where he was accused, there is no way he could have gotten out of it, and so ran to beat a wrongful hanging.

Thanks,
Larry Roland Johnston

[ilbcnyou]

Since I last posted this morning at 2 am, I've noticed that the 1901 census shows John E Evans with the same family the innkeeper of the Blue Bell Inn. Does anyone know anything about the Blue Bell? This is the inn where the musicians and a theatre manager were boarded... I wonder if there was a theatre nearby. And in the 1881 census John Elias Evans is shown as the innkeeper of the Farmers Arms at 25 High Street. Was this a common practice to manage or own different inns?
We were under the assumption he was the owner of the Court Arms because of the photo we have of him standing in front of the pub at the corner of High and Swan.