Joe Morse Evans of Arbon was 72 when a brief illness ended his life on Sunday evening, September 12, 1971, at Bannock Memorial Hospital in Pocatello. The Idaho State Journal reported his death in a brief notice on Monday and printed his obituary on Tuesday, September 14.
He was the second of the nine children of Lorenzo B. "Ren" Evans and Anna Morse Evans, born at Samaria, near Malad, on October 2, 1899, sixteen months after his brother Lorenzo. His father had claimed land in what was then Bannock Valley, in Oneida County, in 1894, and the obituary says Joe grew up at Arbon. The family history on this site calls him Joseph Morse Evans; the obituary reverses his father's names, printing them as "Bowen Lorenzo."
Two Joe Evanses
The old valley news has two Joe Evanses in it. The other was his first cousin, Jonah Edgar "Joe" Evans, eleven years older, the son of Tom and Susannah Evans. Most of the "Joe Evans" and "Mrs. Joe Evans" items in the American Falls Press from 1915 to 1923 belong to that Joe and his wife, Inez, among them the 1920 fire that destroyed their house east of the Arbon post office.
One early item probably does belong to Joe Morse Evans. At Christmas 1915 the pupils of the Central school put on a program, and the Press printed the cast. In the play "Xmas at Finnegan's Flat," the part of Pat Finnegan went to Joe Evans. His younger brothers Walter and Welling had parts that evening, and Leslie played one of the visitors in "The Model School." Joe would have been sixteen; his married cousin was 27 and no longer a pupil. In February 1922 the Pauline column of the Press listed a Ren Evans and a Joe Evans among the dinner guests of Mr. and Mrs. E. A. Young. The same column called the father L. B. Evans, so these were probably the two eldest sons, though the paper does not say so.
When the cousin died in March 1931, the Pocatello Tribune reported that five cousins carried his casket: Ren, Joe, Lester, Milton and Welling Evans. Three of those names are Joe's brothers, and Lester was a son of Dave and Hannah Evans, so the Joe among them was very likely Joe Morse Evans.
Pocatello and back to Arbon
The obituary gives his working life a single line about years spent in Pocatello's mills, with no mill named and no dates. The papers bear it out in part: when his father died in May 1934, the Tribune listed "Joseph M." among the children then living in Pocatello, while Lorenzo, Welling, Tom and their sister Anna Orison were at Arbon. In 1947 he went back to farming at Arbon. The family research gathered for this site finds him there in the 1950 census, a farmer of 50, with his brother Welling, a farm hand, in the same household. When Lorenzo died in June 1965, the Journal named Joseph among the brothers at Arbon. The same research finds a Joe M. Evans as the first holder of a ground-water irrigation right at Arbon, with a priority date of December 11, 1962; the right is now tied to part of his father's old land. In 1926, his sister Anna later remembered, their father had predicted that part of Idaho would someday be irrigated with underground water.
The obituary adds that he was a ward teacher for fifteen years. It mentions this with his membership in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, so it was a calling in his church ward, not a job in a school. It also notes his fondness for baseball and hunting. It names no wife or children, and no paper read for this post says whether he married.
By 1971 the family had thinned. Lorenzo had died in 1965, and Milton and Margaret are missing from the list of survivors; the family research dates their deaths to 1968 and 1970. Bishop Dave Lusk of the Arbon ward was to lead the service at the Manning Funeral Chapel at 2 p.m. on Thursday, September 16, and the grave was to be in Mountainview Cemetery, the same cemetery named for his father's burial in 1934.
On this site: Lorenzo Bowen Evans and Anna Morse, Ren Evans of Arbon as the papers knew him, the Evans family, his sister Anna's married family in the Orisons of Summit, and the Arbon area.
The story as reported
Idaho State Journal, September 14, 1971, page 2, with the notice of September 13, page 2. The original articles are under copyright; this is our own report of what they said.
The 72-year-old Arbon farmer had been sick only briefly before his death at Bannock Memorial Hospital on Sunday evening, September 12. Monday's paper had carried word of his death, with the Manning Funeral Chapel to give out the funeral details later.
Bishop Dave Lusk of the Arbon LDS Ward would lead the service, set for two o'clock Thursday afternoon in the Manning chapel, and Mountainview Cemetery would receive the body afterward. His family planned to greet visitors at the chapel between 7 and 9 p.m. the evening before.
He left four brothers and one sister. Leslie M. and Welling M. Evans lived in Pocatello, Walter M. Evans at Lake Tahoe, Nevada, and Tom M. Evans at Lava Hot Springs. The sister was Mrs. Arch (Anna) Orison of Arbon. The paper named no wife or children.
His birthplace was Samaria, and the date October 2, 1899. The obituary gave his parents as Bowen Lorenzo and Anna Morse Evans. He grew up at Arbon. Pocatello's mills gave him work for a stretch of years, and since 1947 his work had been the farm at Arbon.
His church was the Latter-day Saint faith, in which he spent 15 years as a ward teacher. Of the sports he followed, the obituary singled out baseball and hunting.
Sources
- Idaho State Journal, September 14, 1971, page 2
- Idaho State Journal, September 13, 1971, page 2
- American Falls Press, December 30, 1915, page 7
- American Falls Press, March 5, 1920, page 8
- American Falls Press, February 24, 1922, page 7
- Pocatello Tribune, March 22, 1931, page 2
- Pocatello Tribune, May 31, 1934, page 5
- Idaho State Journal, June 25, 1965, page 2