The subject of this sketch was born September, 1843, in Lebanon County, East Tennessee, and is the eldest son of Dr. James P. Evans, of that State, a citizen of the Cherokee Nation and a leading physician and scholar, having contributed to the chief medical journals of the United States. His mother (a white woman), Miss Melville Noel, was a daughter of Dr. Noel, originally from Virginia. Walter was educated in Green County, Tennessee; Fayetteville, Arkansas; Springfield, Missouri, and Van Buren, Arkansas, until the spring of 1861, when he joined the Arkansas State Troops, in the Confederate service. Later he was attached to the First Cherokee Mounted Rifles, General Pike’s Brigade, of which his father, Dr. Evans, was staff surgeon. Afterwards he joined General Stand Waite’s command, and with them remained until the termination of the war, when he and his father moved to Fort Smith, Arkansas, the latter dying in September 1866. Walter soon afterwards began school teaching in the Cherokee Nation, and later taught among the Choctaws, moving to Texas in 1872, where he continued teaching until 1874. In 1873 he married Miss Bettie Fritts, who died in a few years, childless. In 1875 he returned to the Cherokee Nation, and in 1876 married Miss Charlotte Adair, daughter of Sam Adair, a member of one of the first families of the nation. Mrs. Evans dying without issue in 1877, Mr. Evans married Miss Fannie Jane, daughter of R. W. Walker, by whom he had three children: James P., Robert H. and Effie M. His third wife died in 1883, and in 1891 he married Eliza, eldest daughter of Sam Sixkiller, of considerable prominence in the Cherokee and Creek Nations. In 1882 Mr. Evans opened a drug business in Tahlequah, which he still continues, with a $5,000 stock. He owns 250 acres of good farmland, in cultivation, and a small stock of cattle, besides town property to the value of $3,000. Mr. Evans is a pleasant gentleman, a good conversationalist, and well informed on almost all subjects.
