Evans, Thomas J. (1831-1922)

EVANS

Posted By: Karon Velau (email)
Date: 9/15/2019 at 13:20:41

Thomas J. Evans
born May 1831,Jacksonville, IL
died Feb 2, 1922, Los Angeles, CA

[From the 1891 Biographical History of Pottawattamie County, Iowa, p.471]
T. J. EVANS, ONE OF THE LEADING BUSINESS MEN OF council Bluffs, deserves more than ordinary notice in this work. He was born in May 1831 in Jacksonville, Illinois, and in 1846 moved to La Salle, Illinois, and from there to Council Bluffs. He was born and raised on a farm, one among the early settlers of Illinois; witnessed the growth of Chicago from a small town to its present proportions. When he carted the wheat from the farm to Chicago, 100 miles distant over the wild prairies, cooking his own food and sleeping under the wagon, obtaining for his wheat 35 to 40 cents per bushel, at that time the settlements of Illinois were confined to the skirts of timber and streams, and her vast prairies were unsettled. He is familiar with the hardships of pioneer life in Illinois; born to parents of Scotch and Welsh descent; of strong physical development, to whom hardship and privation seemed more of a pastime than a burden, and today, at the age of sixty, is almost as athletic as the average man of thirty.

His father, Hon. James EVANS, was born in Alabama, in 1799, and married Miss Pheriba ELAM in 1820, and in 1826 emigrated to Illinois, settling upon a farm three miles east of Jacksonville. Being a man of superior intelligence and executive ability, he soon became an important factor in affairs of state, being a member of the First State Constitutional Convention of Illinois, and a Senator of the first State Legislature at Vandalia. On the outbreak of the Black Hawk war, he was commissioned Colonel by the President of the United States, and served in that capacity until the Indians were driven from the state. A portion of that time, his headquarters were at Fort Dearborn, now the business center of Chicago. He was subsequently appointed Register of the United States Land Office at Galena, for the northern half of the State of Illinois, in 1836, by President JACKSON. On account of exposures in the Black Hawk War, he contracted rheumatism, and finally pulmonary consumption, of which he died in August 1837.

During his residence near Jacksonville, Stephen A. DOUGLAS taught school in a log schoolhouse nearby, the only kind of schoolhouse in fashion in those days, and made his home at Colonel Evans' to whom he afterward attributed his start in political life; for it was through Colonel Evans' influence in the Legislature that he secured the appointment of Prosecuting Attorney for Jacksonville and the Springfield District. Colonel EVANS was associated with such men as the Hon. Ninian EDWARDS and Joseph DUNCAN, first state Governors, Murray McCONNELL, Colonel WEATHERFORD, Stephen A. DOUGLAS, Abraham LINCOLN, etc. Colonel EVANS and wife were members of the Presbyterian Church. Of their ten children, four are still living: William, in Chicago; J. F. in Council Bluffs; Mrs. David RICHIE, in LaSalle, Illinois, and the subject of this sketch.

In December 1863, Mr. T. J. EVANS, our present subject, married Augusta A. MUNGER of Davenport, Iowa. Four children have been born to them: Clarence (dead); Clara, Thomas J. Jr., and Harry, aged respectively seventeen, fourteen, and ten years. In 1867 he came to Council Bluffs, where he has since been actively engaged in business, in lumber, grain, milling, banking, real estate, bridge and railway enterprises, etc. He was the promoter of and organized the Omaha & Council Bluffs Railway & Bridge Company, of which he was managing director during the construction and equipment of the bridge and railway, giving it his personal attention from the inception of the enterprise to its final completion; assuming the office of a politician in conducting the election, and in obtaining a tax to aid the enterprise; with the City Council in obtaining franchises of streets, and in lobbying with Congress in securing a charter; engineering, in making surveys, soundings of the Missouri River bed and making plans and specifications for the bridge, approaches, roadway and buildings; builder, in superintending the construction and building of the bridge, railway and buildings; electrician, in drafting specifications, directing and superintending the construction and equipment of a model electric railway; business manager, by making economical contracts and purchases of all materials going into the building and equipping of the bridge, railway, buildings, cars and machinery. He introduced to the public the first complete and practical electric railway built in the United States, making a grand success of the enterprise, both practically and financially.

In 1888 he procured a franchise from the city of Ottawa, Illinois, for the construction of an electric street railway in that city, and during the succeeding year he, with associates, built and equipped a line nearly ten miles in length, the first electric street railway built and operated in Illinois. He is still a large stockholder in both enterprises.

He has always been at the front in assisting public enterprises tending to building up Council Bluffs, and has demonstrated that he has a keen insight into human nature, and the practical character of proposed enterprises. He is progressive, energetic, liberal and generous. He is strictly temperate, a supporter of morality and good government, though not a member of any church. He is a generous supporter of religious institutions, generally. He is a stanch Republican, but no office seeker, having no ambition for holding office. By the exercise of strict business principles, untiring energy, industry and good judgment, he has accumulated a comfortable fortune.