On November 23, 1868 Daniel Evans and Jeannette Jones were wedded in the Pontypridd region of South Wales. Their marriage certificate showed Daniel to be a coal miner, while Jeannette was listed as a spinster (i.e., unmarried). According to family legend, the next day they joined other Evans family members in boarding a ship for America. It was an oft-repeated pattern. Thousands of coal mining families, eager to escape the misery and poverty of the Rhondda Valley region, had done the same in hopes of finding a better life.

Census records show that the Evans clan first lived in Norton Township, Summit County, Ohio, an area heavily populated with other Welsh immigrants. There Daniel resumed work as a coal miner.

Family history states that by 1871 Daniel and Jeannette had migrated to the nearby village of Doylestown, Ohio. Census records show that by 1880 Daniel, apparently a talented musician, was working as a music teacher while Jeannette was very busy keeping house with a daughter and two sons under her watch.

According to a website on Evans family history, Daniel's father, brothers and sisters moved in 1878 to Clarksville, Arkansas, located about sixty miles east of Fort Smith. In 1883 the Daniel Evans family joined them.

The website further states that Daniel "didn't remain long in Clarksville before moving his family to Bonham, Fannin County, Texas (where) he accepted a teaching position at Grayson College" in Whitewright (not connected to present-day Grayson County College).

While in Bonham, Daniel and Jeannette's oldest son, Idris William (I.W.) Evans (born October 20, 1871 in Doylestown) finished his secondary education and went on to attend and to graduate from Grayson College. He then attended classes at Trinity University (Tehuacana, TX) and the University of Chicago.

(Daniel and Jeannette Evans apparently moved back to Arkansas at some point in the 1890s to live out their lives. They are buried in the Oakland Cemetery in Clarksville.)

Once finished with his college education, I.W. Evans returned to Fannin County and began a career in education, teaching in schools at Orangeville, Dodd City and Leonard. (One source states that he served briefly as superintendent in Leonard.)

While working in Dodd City, he met and began dating Mattie Walker. Their marriage certificate, on file at the Fannin County Courthouse, shows they were married on July 3, 1895.

In 1898 Evans ran for the position of county superintendent of schools in the Democratic Primary and won. By August of that year he was appointed to the position early when the then county superintendent, Frank M. Bralley, resigned to become the superintendent of Honey Grove ISD.

Evans served only one term as county superintendent when the Bonham school board hired him in 1900 to be the superintendent of Bonham ISD. Census records show that by June 1900 Evans, his wife Mattie and there two-year-old daughter, Florence Idris, were calling Bonham home. A son, Kenneth, was born in 1902.

During Evans's tenure as superintendent, which lasted until roughly 1914, Bonham ISD went on a rather ambitious building spree. While exact details are somewhat sketchy, it seems that the Stephenson, the first Bailey Inglish (later torn down to make room for the present Bailey Inglish building) and the first high school (located where the Sam Rayburn Library is now) campuses were built thanks to bond packages approved by voters.

According to A History of Bonham, Texas, written by the Bonham High School American History Class (AHC) of 1928-29, during Evans's tenure Bonham High School's Agricultural Department "was one of the best in the state, and a picture of it is found in some Texas History books today." (The picture appeared on page 320 of A School History of Texas by E.C. Barker, C.S. Potts and C.W. Ramsdell, published by Row Peterson & Co., 1924.) The AHC paper goes on to state: "While Mr. Evans was in office the school progressed greatly and gained further recognition in the State Department of Education."

In 1915 I.W. Evans decided that he wanted to try his hand in banking, and was hired by the Bonham State Bank and Trust Company. Exactly what position he was given is unclear. Census records in 1920 show him as a "cashier". It is difficult to believe that someone with Evans's education and background would have started as a cashier. Perhaps the census taker was a bit vague in his description of Evans's occupation?

Regardless of his position, Evans stayed with the banking business until the early summer of 1921 when Bonham ISD again needed a superintendent due to the resignation of H. D. Fillers. The Bonham school board apparently appealed to Evans to help the district through a looming financial crisis. The minutes of the June 15, 1921 school board meeting show that Evans accepted their offer to a two year contract as superintendent at a salary of $3,600 a year. The editor of the Bonham Daily Favorite in its June 15 issue noted that, "Bonham will have as good a superintendent as there is in the state."

Well . . . . . . . . . . . . . not exactly.

Once Evans took a serious look at BISD's finances, he changed his mind. The minutes of the June 29, 1921 school board meeting show that Evans, just two weeks after being hired, asked to be released from his contract as superintendent.

What prompted such a quick reversal on Evans's part? In a statement submitted to the Bonham Daily Favorite and published in its June 30 issue, Evans explained:

I accepted the Superintendency of the Bonham Public Schools in the belief that their financial status would justify the hope of maintaining present standards and provide for much needed improvements. First estimates, made in perfect good faith, have failed to hold good, and this, in the face of certain reductions in the assessed valuations of the City, gives such an unpromising financial outlook for the schools as to render the terms of my engagement with the School Board inadvisable, both from my own personal standpoint and from theirs. I, of course, regret this turn of affairs, but the course taken is the one that serves best the interest of all concerned.

The article went on to state: "The School Board, having gone thoroughly into the matter and having found that financial conditions are just as Mr. Evans stated, accepted the resignation." The superintendent's job then went to L.H. Rather.

Evans's decision against returning to education was a wise career move. The early 1930s saw the formation of the Bonham State Bank (BSB) with Evans as a vice-president. The 1930 census also list his occupation as "V. President, Bank".

Though 1930 saw him successful in the banking business, that same year dealt Evans a personal blow when his wife of thirty-five years, Mattie, died in late September.

Evans apparently stayed in his position as a vice-president with BSB until late 1938 when failing health got the best of him.

On Saturday, December 17, 1938, I.W. Evans, teacher, administrator, banker and the son of Welsh immigrants, died at Allen Memorial Hospital in Bonham. He was sixty-seven years old. He was laid to rest in Willow Wild Cemetery.

In writing about his death, local newspapers waxed poetic. The Bonham Daily Favorite, in a lengthy obituary/article, stated that "a more princely man has not lived among us, nor one whose labors have been of greater value to the community." It further stated:

I.W. Evans had clean lips and a pure heart. Those who associated with him for years never heard him use a vulgar word, tell a smutty story or defame a character. He was too big in thought, too clean in spirit, too considerate of others, to permit himself to intentionally wound a struggling soul. His purpose and practice was ever to encourage others to higher deeds and nobler motives. His was a sympathy that reached out to lift others up, to alleviate suffering, lessen sadness, strengthen the discouraged, and encourage the beaten and despairing.

He was as free from selfishness as human weakness permit(s) any man to be.

In the obituary that appeared in the December 23 issue of the Leonard Graphic, an unknown author wrote:

In his death the writer has sustained an immeasurable loss, and I recount and recall the traits that ennobled and endeared him. I knew him first as my teacher in school; afterwards as a citizen and a friend who was always interested in the welfare of his pupils.

Notwithstanding he was an active and busy man, he lived a quiet and unobtrusive life, and when at last he grew weary at the end of the road methinks he quietly laid down the burdens of this workaday world and peacefully passed into the realms of Eternity, conscious that a life well spent in the service of God and his fellowman would prove safe convoy through death's shadow into the sunlight of the farther Shore.

By the mid 1960s I.W. Evans's memory was still fresh on the minds of many Bonhamites, due in no small part to the fact that his daughter, Florence Idris, still worked for the Bonham schools.

In its March 21, 1966 meeting, the Bonham School Board decided that once the old junior high school was renovated to handle fourth, fifth and sixth grades, it would be named I.W. Evans Elementary School.

And so I.W. Evans Elementary opened its doors to Bonham ISD students in September 1967.

Special thanks to Suzie Henderson for finding the Evans family website, and to Rob Holman for allowing me to browse through his copy of the 1924 Texas History textbook.