THE EVANSTON REVIEW
'Too Perfect to Be Lovable'
Man for Whom We're Named
He was too perfect to be lovable, a latter-day biographer concluded, but Dr. John Evans, who left his name to Evanston, had not only monumental accomplishments to his credit, he also had a few humanizing traits.
He was a "shockingly late riser," never lifting his 200 pounds out of the sack until 10 or 11 a.m. And he was an inveterate whittler, using special cedar sticks which he ordered all the way from the Atlantic Seaboard," wrote Marshall Sprague of the Denver Post in 1959, the centennial of Colorado's Gold Rush.
Dr. Evans was born in 1814, into a Quaker family in Waynesville, 0., and before his death in 1897 he had earned the titles of physician, teacher, lawmaker, builder of railroads and founder of educational institutions, one of them Northwestern and the other the University of Denver.
Studies in Cincinnati
He was graduated from Lynn Medical College in Cincinnati in 1838 and was the founder of a pioneer insane asylum there, becoming the first superintendent of the state asylum in 1845.
When he arrived in Chicago in 1848, it was as a young widower; his wife and three of his four children had died in Indiana. Young Dr. Evans started his career over in Illinois; he remarried, became professor of obstetrics at Rush Medical College, helped found Chicago's first hospital and then Northwestern.
He invested successfully in real estate himself, as well as helping to devise the sale of Evanston lots which helped finance Northwestern.
His own home in Evanston was one of the first in the new village and one of the centers of its early social life. His willingness to move from Chicago was the reason the town bears his name instead of that of another trustee, Orrington Lunt, who refused to leave his Chicago house. (It wasn't until after the Chicago fire of 1871 had destroyed that house that the Lunts moved north.)
Dr. Evans, like most of the other trustees and faculty. of Northwestern, was strongly anti-slavery, and he was a strong, early supporter of Abraham Lincoln. He founded the Republican Party in Evanston and furthered Lincoln's cause through it.
In 1862 Lincoln rewarded his support by appointing him territorial governor of Colorado.
"Even in his 40s," Mr. Sprague says, "Evans looked like a patriarch-ponderous, benign, tireless, deeply religious. He had an immense beard and a fine intelligence. He thrived on doing good and playing games for high stakes in railroads, real estate and politics."
Forced Out of Office
Dr. Evans remained territorial governor only until 1865, when he was forced out of office by the combination of Lincoln's death, the losing fight for Colorado statehood' and the infamous Sand Creek massacre by army forces of Indians who had placed themselves under government protection, an incident that occurred during his administration.
He remained one of the dominant figures of the region, chiefly because of his success in luring the Union Pacific and Kansas Pacific railroads to Denver when it seemed both would miss the city. He also was elected senator when statehood seemed at hand, but resigned in order to expedite Colorado territory's change to state status.
He began a railroad himself, the Denver and South Park Railroad, which crossed the continental divide via the l,845-foot Alpine Tunnel, the first in the Rockies. He also built the eight-story Railroad Building in Denver, one of the sights of the city in the 1890s. And, of course, he started another school, the University of Denver. I
John Evans left his name not only to Evanston, but also to. Evanston, Wyo., and to Mt. Evans in Colorado.
