On Thursday, May 31, 1934, the Pocatello Tribune reported that Lorenzo B. Evans, 65, had died in Pocatello early that morning. He was Ren Evans of Arbon, who in 1894 had filed the oldest dated federal land claim found on the Arbon floor, in what was then Bannock Valley, in Oneida County. His obituary ran to a few short paragraphs, but the papers had been writing about him for more than twenty-five years.
The obituary
The Tribune gave his birth as March 24, 1869, at Brigham City, Utah, and said he had lived in the Arbon and Malad sections since 1896. It called him a former bishop of the Arbon ward and said he had been superintendent of its Sunday school. He left his widow, Anna, nine children, seven grandchildren and many brothers and sisters, among them Thomas B. Evans of Arbon. Four of the children lived at Arbon: Lorenzo M., Welling M., Thomas M. and Mrs. Archie Orison. Joseph M., Milton M., Walter M. and Mrs. Ross Waters lived in Pocatello, and Leslie J. M. at Malad. Mrs. Archie Orison was his daughter Anna; on November 11, 1933, the Salt Lake papers had listed her licence to marry Archie M. Orison, both of Arbon.
The funeral was set for 1 p.m. on Saturday, June 2, at the Pocatello First Ward, with burial in Mountainview cemetery. The next day's front page repeated the details under the headline "Evans Services Set." Both notices name the officiating bishop as "Bishop John N. Arbon of the Arbon ward." He was probably Joseph N. Arbon, the ward's bishop in those years. The Salt Lake Tribune carried a short notice on June 2.
Two details differ from his family history. The Pocatello Tribune printed his widow's maiden name as Morris; the family history, and her own death notice in the Salt Lake Tribune in July 1943, give Morse. The family history also dates his death May 30, while the paper, writing on the Thursday, said he had died "early this morning."
What the papers had said
In November 1908, at a meeting at the upper schoolhouse, Arbon settlers named Adam Affleck, Lorenzo Evans and John Payne to answer letters from homeseekers, the American Falls Press reported. In December 1912 the Press reprinted a Pocatello Tribune story: L. B. Evans, vice-president of the Arbon Commercial Club, had come to Pocatello to promote a wagon road over Trail Creek, so the valley could sell its grain and do its trading there.
When Power County was formed in 1913, the governor's first appointments included "L. B. Evans, farmer; Arbon," and the new county board listed him as probate judge. The board also ruled that the judge must live at the county seat in American Falls. The Stories entry on the judgeship tells what followed.
In February 1916 he spent two days in American Falls and told the Press that the school in his district, where Mr. Ray was principal and Miss Claudia Cox the primary teacher, was the best they had had in years. "I place our teachers second to none in the county," he said, and went on:
We have a literary society that would be a credit to any community, and the moral tone of the whole district has been made higher by the influence of these two young people. I shall be glad to have you print what I say. My boy, Wren was out of school on account of illness and a little note that Mr. Ray sent to him established his place in our minds as a loyal friend of the boys and the highest interests of our children.
In March 1917 Mrs. E. A. Logan's history of the valley in the Press counted him among the first pioneers still living there, and wrote:
L. B. Evans has made good fighting his way through sweat and toil and now is the possessor of a splendid ranch and has gone into the cattle business the past few years. He was appointed probate judge of Power county when the county was created, but refused to qualify.
By the winter of 1919 he was carrying the rural mail. That December the Arbon news reported five days of storms, with the mercury at 28 and 32 below zero at the D. P. Ripley and John Bowen homes at either end of the valley:
The side roads are drifted full with snow making them impassable. The U. S. mail comes when the carrier can get through. The storm was so severe one day that L. B. Evans, the rural carrier, only got part way on his route, having to return home, due to bad roads. The storm was too severe and blinding to face.
A few weeks later the column explained that he had changed his mail days because the mail was reaching Arbon late from Pauline, and added, "The rural route people should not complain of him."
Oil, an election and a cheese factory
In December 1921 the Press listed "L. B. Evans, stockman at Arbon" among the officers of the company drilling the valley's first oil well. In January 1922 he was out selling stock in "the Arbon Oil Company": thirty-four men of American Falls and Rockland had subscribed, he announced, and he was spending that week in Malad. The Rockland column added that "he has land joining the oil fields."
In August 1922 he ran in the Republican primary for county commissioner against E. C. England of Pauline, who was serving his second term. He carried Arbon and even England's own precinct of Pauline, and the first returns left him eight votes behind with some precincts still out. The Press called his race "the surprise of the Republican primary," since he had done "practically no campaigning." England, not Evans, was the party's candidate that November.
By January 1924 the Salt Lake Tribune was calling him "Bishop L. B. Evans of Arbon"; the Evans family page dates his time as bishop to 1923–24, though his family history gives 1914–1916. That month he was arranging a meeting at Pauline to count the valley's cows for a cheese factory. In April he told the Press he had signed twenty-three farmers with 213 cows, about half the cows in the community, to sell their milk for a year to a factory backed by Ernest Brog of Driggs. No report read for this post says whether it opened.
On this site: Lorenzo Bowen Evans and Anna Morse, the Evans family and his brother Thomas Bowen Evans, the Arbon area, and the 1943 accident that took his grandson, Duaine Orison.
Sources
- Pocatello Tribune, May 31, 1934, page 5
- Pocatello Tribune, June 1, 1934, page 1
- Salt Lake Tribune, June 2, 1934, page 34
- American Falls Press, November 21, 1908, page 1
- American Falls Press, December 26, 1912, page 1
- American Falls Press, February 6, 1913, page 1
- American Falls Press, February 27, 1913, page 1
- American Falls Press, February 10, 1916, page 4
- American Falls Press, March 29, 1917, page 7
- American Falls Press, December 19, 1919, page 1
- American Falls Press, January 9, 1920, page 4
- American Falls Press, December 16, 1921, page 14
- American Falls Press, January 27, 1922, page 1
- American Falls Press, January 27, 1922, page 2
- American Falls Press, August 3, 1922, page 1
- American Falls Press, November 9, 1922, page 1
- Salt Lake Tribune, January 24, 1924, page 3
- American Falls Press, April 3, 1924, page 1
- Salt Lake Telegram, November 11, 1933, page 6
- Salt Lake Tribune, November 11, 1933, page 26
- Salt Lake Tribune, July 29, 1943, page 18