Fred D. Everett

page 172

The world, and America in particular, will never grow tired of praising the “self-made” man, one who begins life with none of the often fictitious helps, such as wealth, position or a family name, and by consistent and hard “plugging” forges forward to a position in the front rank; when this man has won the contest he often bears none of the signs of the struggles and disappointments through which he has passed, but to those who know his whole life he seems deserving of his success and well worthy a place among the leaders of men. The popular young lawyer of Albia, Iowa, Fred D. Everett, is one of this class, and in the long future which is before him a highly prosperous career seems to be marked out for him.

Mr. Everett comes from a good mingling of nationalities, the progressiveness of his English father being supplemented with the sturdy qualities of a Swiss mother; he is the son of John and Bertha(Demuth) Everett, the former born in England and the latter in Switzerland, both coming to America in childhood. They were married in Davis county, Iowa, where Mr. Everett followed the occupation of a miller and died in 1900; his wife still survives and resides in Bloomfield, Iowa. There were only two children, a son and a daughter, Fred D. and Frances M.

Fred D. Everett was born in Bloomfield, Iowa, April 18, 1876, and there grew up to manhood. In 1892 he graduated from the high school and the following year taught school in Monroe county. The next two years he engaged in farming in Monroe county, and having from these occupations saved some money and being filled with the ambition to enter the profession of the law, in the fall of 1895 he began his studies in the law department of the State University at Iowa City, from which he graduated in the spring of 1897 and was immediately admitted to the bar.

He selected Albia as the place to begin his legal career and formed a partnership with D. M. Anderson, which has continued to the present time. In the enthusiasm consequent upon the breaking out of the Spanish-American war in 1898 he became a private in Company D, Fifty-first Iowa Infantry, and served in the Philippines up to November, 1899.

Since this time he has engaged actively in the practice of the law. As an evidence of his growing popularity and his ability, in the fall of 1900 he was elected on the Republican ticket to the office of attorney of Monroe county and in the fall of 1902 received a renomination and election for second term. Fraternally Mr. Everett belongs to the Independent Order of Odd Fellows; the Knights of Pythias and the Modern Woodmen; he is a man of much public spirit, and his enterprising character is evidenced in the record of his public career.