Pneumonia took Jonah Edgar Evans of Arbon on the morning of Thursday, March 19, 1931, in a Pocatello hospital. The Tribune gave his age as 43, though the family history on this site says he was 42. To the valley he was Joe Evans, the son of Tom and Susannah Evans, the T. B. Evanses who had come to Arbon Valley in 1900, kept an early store, for a time its post office and for many years its telephone switchboard. The Pocatello Tribune printed a short notice that same day, a funeral notice the next day and a report of the services on Sunday, March 22.
The Tribune called him a well-known Arbon farmer, and on the Sunday a prominent one. His parents were still at Arbon, and so were his wife and their two daughters, Neva and Connie Jean. One of his three sisters, Constance, Mrs. Don Jenson, also lived in the valley; the other two, Maude, Mrs. Add Affleck, and Ruth, Mrs. Mike Murphy, had settled in Boise. An older brother, Bert, had died in 1909 at 22. The paper printed his wife's name as Ina; the site's family pages know her as Inez Matilda Lusk, of the Lusk family of Malad and Pauline, whom Joe married on October 17, 1912. Whether "Ina" was a misprint or a name she went by is not known.
His funeral took place not in the valley but in Pocatello, at the First Ward L.D.S. church, starting at 1 o'clock on Saturday, March 21. In charge was Bishop Joseph Arbon, then serving his second term at the head of the Arbon Ward. One of the two speakers was Willard J. Anderson of Arbon, probably the young Willard J. Andersen of the Andersen family, later a bishop of the ward himself; the paper does not say so. Five Evans cousins carried the casket, and he was buried in Mountain View cemetery in Pocatello. From Kaysville, Utah, came Mr. and Mrs. John R. Woolsey and Vern Woolsey; Mrs. Woolsey was Inez's sister, and the Kaysville paper reported that the widow and her daughter Jeanne would stay with her there for a few weeks.
Joe Evans in the earlier papers
The American Falls Press noticed Joe and Inez Evans now and then in the years before. In October 1917 its roving correspondent, who signed himself the Pilgrim, reached the Evans place, half a mile east of the Arbon post office. Mrs. Joe Evans, he reported, kept a record of her dairy. From eight cows between May 1 and September 1, 1916, she had made 381 pounds of butter, and in 1917 five cows were giving her about 20 pounds a week, which sold for 30 to 40 cents a pound. The butter and egg money, she said, paid the grocery bills and bought the clothes for herself and her daughter, and there was butter enough for Joe's father's household too. A week later he wrote of Joe's two cattle dogs, which went out on his order every evening and brought the dairy herd in from the stubble or pasture:
One of these dogs is part Scotch collie, while the other one, according to Mr Evans, is just "black dog."
That same October Inez's brother Park Lusk, in training with the army in Washington state, wrote to her that he had been made a corporal.
In late February 1920 a kitchen fire burned the Evans house to the ground, with no insurance, a loss told on this site's Tragedies page. The Evanses lent their piano to the Central school until they could build again. That year a J. E. Evans was clerk of the Bannock school district, which ran the Central school, and in November Joe Evans was one of the clerks at the Arbon election, where his father was a judge. In May 1922 he was getting ready to move a house that had belonged to Morris Johnson; the rest of the item is lost in the digitized text.
Some caution is needed with these items. The 1931 funeral report shows that Joe had a cousin who was also called Joe Evans, so not every "Joe Evans" in the valley news has to be him. The 1917 items and the 1920 fire are tied to him by the place, half a mile east of the post office, and by Mrs. Evans's Lusk family. The school clerk of 1920 is tied to him only by his initials, J. E., and the election clerk only by his name, so both are likely but not certain. A Joe Evans was also on the Arbon Valley growers' committee in February 1930, but the paper does not say which one.
On this site: the Evans family, the history of Thomas Bowen and Susannah Evans, Mrs. T. B. Evans at the post office and switchboard, the Arbon family and the valley of Arbon.
The story as reported
Pocatello Tribune, March 19, 1931, page 10, with the funeral notices of March 20, page 3, and March 22, page 2. The original articles are under copyright; this is our own report of what they said.
Pneumonia killed Joe Evans, as the Arbon farmer Jonah Edgar Evans was called, on Thursday morning, March 19. He was 43 and died in a Pocatello hospital.
At Arbon, the Tribune said, he left his widow, Ina, their daughters Neva and Connie Jean, and his parents, Mr. and Mrs. T. B. Evans. Of his three sisters, Mrs. Don Jenson lived at Arbon, while Mrs. Ad Affleck (Ada in the Sunday report) and Mrs. Michael Murphy made their homes in Boise. The first notice printed the parents' initials as G. B. and the sisters' first names as Maude and Ruth.
Friday's paper gave the plans: the Hall mortuary was handling arrangements, Bishop J. N. Arbon of Arbon would conduct the service, and it would begin at 1 p.m. Saturday in Pocatello's First Ward L.D.S. church.
According to Sunday's paper, the services took place on Saturday afternoon as scheduled, with Bishop Joseph Arbon in charge. Joe's cousins Ren, Joe, Lester, Milton and Welling Evans bore the casket, and the Hall mortuary saw to the burial in Mountain View cemetery. Willard J. Anderson of Arbon and Lewis Williams of Boise each spoke. For the music, the Relief Society choir and a Mrs. Chambers took part, and Arthur Hall sang by himself.
Sources
- Pocatello Tribune, March 19, 1931, page 10
- Pocatello Tribune, March 20, 1931, page 3
- Pocatello Tribune, March 22, 1931, page 2
- Weekly Reflex, March 26, 1931, page 8
- American Falls Press, October 26, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, November 2, 1917, page 3
- American Falls Press, March 5, 1920, page 8
- American Falls Press, March 12, 1920, page 2
- American Falls Press, May 28, 1920, page 1
- American Falls Press, November 12, 1920, page 2
- American Falls Press, May 25, 1922, page 4
- Salt Lake Tribune, February 9, 1930, page 17