Letter written by: John H. Evans

(Note: This letter gives alot of History of the Evans Family and their move to Montana)

Dear Cousins, John and Mary Evans, Duncombe, Iowa.

I received your letter of Nov. 1st, 1927, some time ago but I was sick with a bad cold, too weak and nervous to write. I will now write this history of my father's family and also all I can remember of the others of my father's and mother's families. Then I will give a sketch of my own life and my family.

My Father was Jermiah Evans. He married a Miss Hannah Quimby in the state of New York, and soon after their marriage they moved to Huron County, Ohio, then there was five children born, four boys and one girl. You say you have the Bible record of my father's family, so I will go on with what I recollect and what my mother told me.

My father went to California in 1849 with a company organized in Maraettea, Ohio, by a man named Chapman. Father returned home in 1853 and started to California with all of us, his family, and his father and mother and on daughter, Mary Jane Evans, about 16 years old and we all went to Wisconsin, where my fahter had a brother by the name of George Evans, who was married, with two or three children, and my Uncle George, with his family, went with us. Made our party my grandfather and family and his two sons and their families, and we all went to Benton County, Iowa, together. But George Evans, my uncle, did not stay there. He and his family went back to Wisconsin that same Fall and my grandfather Evans bought a farm and my father and my brother, Hiram, built a house about three miles from Grandpa's house. Then I was six years and they left me with my grandpa that winter to go to school. Hiram, my brother, was then twelve years old and my sister, Jane, was nine years old and I six. Then my brother, Wm. C. Evans, was born three years after me to a day, his and my birthdays are both February 21st. Then in about three years another brother was born, Winfield Scott Evans. That is all the children in our family, that lived to full growth. We all about three years apart. I was born February 21st, 1846, and I will be 82 years old this coming birthday. My grandfather died the Spring of 1854, in Benton County, Iowa, and my grandma and her daughter went back to Huron County, Ohio, that same Spring and my father with all of us moved to Emmet County to McKnight's Point, on the Des Moines River, forty miles from Fort Dodge, Iowa, and in 1857 the Indians killed all the people at Spirit Lake and part of the people at the little settlement at what was called then Jackson Springfield, just across the state line in Minnesota, just above what is Estherville now, in Iowa. There was 32 people at Spirit Lake and seven at Jackson; my father went with the party which were all ciitzens, no soldiers I believe, but old Major Williams who had been a Major in the U.S. Army and had been command of Fort Dodge before that part was settled much. He organized the party in Fort Dodge and bought them out. In the Spring of 1857 my fahter died and was buried on the north end of our farm and we lived there until 1861, when the Civil War broke out and my brother, Hiram, enlisted in May 1861 and went in Army of the Potomac, and was taken prisoner and was exchanged in about six months, then served through all those efforts to take Richmond, and was taken prisoner in the summer of 1864, and wound up in Anderson Prison until we, with Gen. Sherman, released the prisoners at Anderson, and came home in the Fall of 1865. Oh, I did not tell you where my father was moved. I was not there then and I do not remember where he was moved to but I have written to my brother William, for he and Winfield moved him after I came to Montana, then they moved to Montana also. When they answer me I will let you know where he is buried at.

Now, I will give you a sketch of my life. I tried to get enlisted in the Civil War with my brother Hiram but I was only 15 years old past and of course I was refused, and I had to stay at home that Summer but the Sioux were threatening and the State of Iowa raised a regiment of State troops to defend the frontier of Iowa and I enlisted in that regiment towards the Fall fo 1861 in Co. A., State troops, and my company was stationed as Spirit Lake and the other companies stationed along the norht part of the state line and the west line of Iowa until the Summer of 1863, then we were relieved by the 6th Iowa Cav., and were discharged, and then we very near all of the Co. enlisted in the 2nd Iowa Cav. which was at Memphis, Tenn. We all went to Co. F., 2nd Iowa Cav. and filled it to 101 men, then we fought a number of battles there and the next Spring we moved east and fought our way to near Nashville, Tenn., when were sent south through Alabama until we met General Hood's Army coming north. We were 3000 strong, all cavalry. We escorted him into Nashville, fighting him every day, when we got to Franklin twenty miles from Nashville we were reenforced by two corps of infantry and we fought him for two days and checked him with a tremendous loss to him, and then Nashville was reenforced and we retreated to those, and the history tells us all how we demolished his whole army. So we fought on until the close of the war and I was discharged in August, 1865, and went home and wintered that winter at West Bend. Hiram got home a few days after I got home and I tell you I had a time that winter. In the Spring of 1866 Hiram and I went to Montana. Left mother and the two boys Wm. and Winne there pretty well fixed until we sent for them to come to Montana. We would not send for them on account of the Indians being so hostile there and in the Spring of 1867 the Indians broke out on the eastern part of Montana and our Governor, Thomas Meagher, the first Governor of Montana got an order to raise a regiment of volunteers there to defend the country until they could send regular troops there, so I went to the governor and told him where I had served in the War and I asked for a recruiting commission to raise a company and he willingly gave it to me and we hunted Indians for seven months and the U.S. troops arrived and the Emergency Regiment was discharged with exception of one Company reserved for scouts for the regular troops. and I got my Co. reserved throught my experience with the Indians before the War and I served a little over two years in the Indian War on the plains and then we were discharged and I went to mining for a few years and was not very lucky and I went to trading with the Blackfeet and Pagan Indians and some other peacable tribes, and I did make that win and I got married to a Miss Peters, who came to Fort Benton in 1875, and I sent for mother and the two brothers in West Bend, Iowa, in 1875, and they came up the Missouri River on a steam boat and went to raising stock cattle and horses, and did well. Hiram never got over the awful threatment in Anderson Prison and he died October 1882. Winfield died in 1905 by ptomaine poison from canned beef, but he made a fortune, but his wife died last year. She left a son and one daughter, both married well. Her husband's name is Charles Dunlap. He is an electrian and well fixed and a fine man every way. They have one daughter and one son, both well educated. The daughter is teaching music now. The son is in High School. He is a very bright boy and learning very fast. I have two sons by my second wife. Both of them married. The oldest one has no children, was married in 1914. He is in charge of the largest creosote plant in America, at Eagle Harbor, nine miles across the Bay from Seattle, Washington State. That one's name is Frank L. Evans. The other one is Grant H. Evans, and he lives in Everett, Washington, and he is captain of ships, and he likes the ocean. He has one child.

Oh, I haven't told you that my Uncle George, my father's brother, was killed in the Battle of Shilo, in the Civil War in 1861. That is my Uncle who went back to Wisconsin from Benton County, Iowa.

Now, I will give you a little sketch of my life and my family. When the Civil War broke out I enlisted in an Iowa State Regiment for the protection of the frontier of Iowa in 1861, was discharged in 1862. Then I enlisted in the 2nd Iowa Cav. and was discharged in August 16th, 1865. I went home and stayed there that winter. Then I and my brother went to Montana in 1866, then in the Spring of 1867 the Indians broke out and the Governor got orders from Washington D.C. to enlist a regiment of soldiers to protect Montana and I went to the Governor and got a recruiting commission and I recruited a Co. and I was commissioned Captain of it. In seven months after that the regular Army soldiers come out to Montana and they discharged all of the regiment excepting me and my Company and we were kept for Scouts for the Army, so I served nearly three years in the Indian Wars. In 1876 I got married in Fort Benton in Montana at the Head of Navigation on the Missouri River. After ten years my wife died. We had three children born but two died. One girl lived. In three years after the death of my wife I married again and we had two boys born to us and in 1911 my second wife died in Seattle, Washington, and my two sons live there, which I have mentioned above in this letter, and my daughter lives here in Chewelah in the same block that I live in. I have not married since, so I have a housekeeper, and do very well.

I hope you will write so on and make it more plain which cousins I am. I am very anxious to get more information of our relations as my father and all of us have jumped away off here west and we can straighten ourselves out all o.k.

I hope you will excuse my mistakes as I have mixed up lot of the account of things I have written, for my head has been so dizzy that I could not hardly write it. When you write, tell me if ther e is anything that you cannot understand and I will try to make it straight. I cannot write any more now.

I am some of your relation.

With best wishes to you all, I am

Yours truly,

JOHN H. EVANS

Chewelah, Wash.

Box 94.

Copied from The River Press - Page 5, Wednesday, August 6, 1975, Fort Benton, Montana

Adventurous John Evans

John H. Evans was another early day Fort Bentonite with a taste for adventure and an amazing capacity for getting all of its a normal man could want. He must have been born in Ohio, about 1846, as a younger brother was born at Mariette in 1849. About 1854 the Evans family came west to Palo Alto Co. in northern Iowa, where the father plowed the first furrowevery turned in the county.

When the Civil War broke out John Evans was 15, and possibly as a compromise, enlisted in Co. A of Iowa state troops sent to guard the wild west frontier near Spirit Lake against Indians. Two years later he wrangled a transfer to the 2nd Iowa cavalry stationed at Memphis, Tennessee.

After the war he and another brother, Hiram, also a Civil War veteran, headed west in 1866. They apparently both stopped off at Fort Benton, as Hiram freighted and John was soon named as captain of a nebulous Montana force to fight Indians, by acting Governor Meagher in 1867, at 21. His obituary said that his company scouted for the regular army in Indian campaigns of the next three years.

John Evans next turns up in the Whoop-up country, with Harry "Kamoose" Taylor head of the Spitzee cavalry which had a memorable run-in with Johnny Healy at Fort Whoop-up. Exact stories differ by participants, but on favored is that the group rode into the fort to make Healy quit selling guns to the Indians--they as wolfers didn't like it a bit. At the peak of a heated discussion, Healy, who'd been puffing on a big black cigar, swept the top off a keg of powder, threatened to blow the whole bunch to perdition if they didn't get. The Spitzees left, an action roundly applauded by other frontierments who had had words with Johnny Healy.

The still youthful Evans apparently had definite leadership ability. He ramrodded the group of Canadian and American wolfers who lost their horses on the Teton in the spring of 1873, then picked up new replacements. They got remounts after a scrap with Assinniboines on Battle Creek in the Cypress Hills which reverberated in the halls of state in Washington and Ottawa. (Bob Miller, a great nephen, proudly claims that John Evans was the man who brought the Mounted Police into Canada.) By the time reports of the battle in the Cypress Hills, filtered through such partial reporters as Hudson Bay officials, it had grown into something akin to Hitler's blitzes.

The North West Mounted Police came to Alberta in 1874, and most of the traders and wolfers in the Whoop-Up country decided the welcome mat had been jerked in, among them John Evans. His on time-partner in the Spitzee cavalry, Kamoose Taylor, had the distinction of being the first arrested by the Mounties. Canadian authorities were looking for other participants in the Cypress Hills fight, ultimately brought extradition proceedings against six of them in 1875 down in Helena. The men were turned loose, but three more went in the pokey up in Winnipeg.

John Evans, the "Chief" to members of the party, came back to Benton to a roaring welcome. With his old stamping grounds closed, he opened a saloon in Fort Benton, appropriately named "Extradition Saloon." The next year he married Clara Peters, who had come here in 1875.

On the way to becoming a solid citizen of the community, he was named Fort Benton's first fire marshall early in 1877. It was more than a title, residents chucked their garbage and trash out in the street and lighted the flammables, no mean fire hazard for a village of log and frame houses, interspersed with haystacks for the numerous oxen utilized. He apparently did a good job as fire marshall. The "big fire" freely forecast by the Benton Record never materizlized.

Meanwhile, Evans had raised $400 for defense of his old buddies up in Winnepeg, with strong help from John Donnelly and others of the community, and the three were finally freed. (All indictments were dropped in 1882.)

The Nez Perce came through in mid-fall of 1877, and what a bunch of hostiles would do to the freight down at Cow Island would curl the hair of a Bentonite dependent on the freight. The merchants hollered for help, there was world of military experience around, and the Benton Volunteers were formed to head there to save that precious freight, protected by a sergeant's guard of soldiers. A band of about 30 answered. Heading them was John Donnelly, captain in the Civil War and leader of a big Fenian raid into Canada. His underofficers were John Healy and John Evans, the old antagonists in the Whoop-up affair. Probate Judge John Tattan, retired sergeat of regulars was another member. The volunteers got to Cow Island too late to stop some destruction by hostiles, but in plenty of time to hear the whistle of bullets again, up Cow Creek coulee a few miles. One man was killed, while others could point out near misses on their return to Benton.

John Evans business became "Our House" in partnership with John Savage, a partnership dissolved by mutual consent in 1879. In 1882, Evans bought the Brewery Saloon. It was just what the name implies, and for several years Evans operated Fort Benton's one and only brewery.

But chopping off of Canadian trade, the death of his wife, Clara in 1882, and finally the railroad at Fort Benton, seemingly convinced Evans that there wasn't much future in business here. About 1889 he began a ranching operation on upper Sand Coulee, and that year a new postoffice was named Evans for him. It was perpetuated on the maps well into this century.

Evans didn't stick around that long. In 1898, probably urged by old friends and associates, he headed north on America's last great gold rush, to Alaska. One could guess that he met Johnny Healy up in the northland, along with dozens of others still itchy footed Benton men. He spent 20 years prospecting in Alaska, presumable without too much luck, and finally retired to Chewelah, Washington, where he died April 17, 1929. Two sons, Grant and Frank, and Daughter Mrs. Charles Dunlap, and a brother William Curtis Evans at Bainville, survived him.

W.C. Evans who had two brothers here, came west a few years after the Civil War freighted for I.G. Baker for a time, in 1877 returned mackinaw with John to get the former's family in Iowa. William's wife and two sons died shortly before his arrival and in the spring he remarried coming back to Benton in 18xx. He ran a dairy just down river from here until about 1904 when he moved to what became Bainsville.

Hiram Evans, who came here in 1866, married a Blackfeet woman at Browning and died 1884.

©RMichaels