Darrow School - Shaker Post Yearbook (New Lebanon, NY)

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1936 The Peg Board THE NORTH FAMILY DWELLING HOUSE Limitations of time and space make any adequate study of Elder Frederick's life and writings impossible in this number of the Peg Board. We shall, therefore, attempt no more than to tell what is known of his boyhood days, hoping to present the story of his later life in future issues. Of Frederick Evans's early years we have practically no record except what his autobiography gives us, and unfortunately it gives us less than we should like to have. When the Atlantic Monthly asked Evans to write about his life and his experience as a seeker after truth, apparent- ly he was reluctant to agree. The reasons for his reluctance and for his final acquiescence are set forth on the first page of his Aufobiograplzy of a Shaker: I can see great importance in a prineiple, very little in an individual. Not of myself should I write of myself, but in the hope that others may be advantaged thereby, I acquiesce in the foregoing suggestion. I have always lived much in the future, yet my present life has been a practical suc- cess, while my work has ever been before me, my reward has ever been with me. I am satisfied with the continued realizations of the prophetical spirit within-of the abstract principles that have been my inner life. Evans was born in England, and there he spent the first twelve years of his life. When he was four years old, his mother died, and he passed into the care of her relatives. All attempts to educate him seem to have failed. These things, he himself, can recount best: My father's family were of the middle class in England. They were long-lived, my grandmother reaching the advanced age of one hundred and four, and my grandfather approaching one hundred. My father, George Evans, was the youngest of twelve children and died comparatively youngg he was sent into the English army, was under Sir Ralph Abercrombie in the Egyptian expedition, cooperating with the Heet under Nelson, and held a commission in the service. My mother was of a class a little above, so that the marriage caused a perpetual breach between the two families. Her name was Sarah White. I was born in Leominster, Worcestershire, England, on the 9th of June, 1808. The first fact that I can remember 65

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The Peg Board 1936 .tl , . up E ! 1 i . l l 3 1 1 ELDER FREDERICK W. EVANS The Boyhood of Frederick Evans NE OF the best known of all the Shaker elders was Frederick W. Evans, who died at Mount Lebanon, March 6, 1893, after having spent sixty-three years there in the North Family I the address made by Elder Daniel Offord at Evans's funeral we find this paragraph: 1. p. 16. Elder Frederick has been perhaps, the best known to the public of any member of our Order. His correspondence has been extensive and his radical thoughts and ideas have had a wide circulation. Prominent editors and their patrons gave respectful notice to his utterances, even though they were too far in advance of the present time. He received papers from all parts of the world, and often found his articles copied in their columns. So his truthful messages have found their way to many homes and hearts, and in the midst of the great Babylon of sin and confusion many will rise up and call him blessed, declaring that the world is to-day made better for the influence of so noble and strong a character! Immortalized, a little book by the Shakers, Ai1'ectionabely Inscribed to the Memory of Elder Frederick W. Evans, Pittsdeld 1898 64

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The Peg Board 1936 may be of some interest to the student in anthropology. When I came of age, and on my return to England in 1830, I was relating to an aunt on my father's side, whom I had never before seen, that I had always had stored up in my memory one thing that I could not account forg I could remember nothing before or after it to give it a meaning, and none of my mother's relatives knew anything about it. I saw the inside Q' a coach, and was handed out of it from a woman'.f arms into lhose cj some other person. My aunt was utterly astonished, and stated that my mother was coming down from London to Birmingham, when I was not more than .fix months old, that something happened to the horses which frightened the party badly, and that I was handed out fjust as I had seen and rememberedl by my mother into the arms of another person. - When I was four years of age my mother died, and I was thrown among her relatives, who sent me to school at Stourbridge, where there were some two hundred scholars, and the position the master assigned to me was that of the poorest scholar in the school, which effected my release from the schoolroom, to my great satisfaction and peace of mind, for, if there was one thing more than another that I hated, it was schoolbooks and an English schoolmaster, with his flogging proclivities. I was then about eight years old! As yet no definite record of Evans's attendance has been found in any Stourbridge school However, through the kindness of Mr. Harry E. Palfrey, Chairman of the Governors of the King Edward School at Stourbridge, the following interesting information has been made available to US. Mr.Palfrey says: I I am greatly 'interested in your statement about Evans and the Shakers, and his early connection with Stourbridge. Unfortunately the records of our Grammar School in the early 1 9th century are practically non-existent and there are no records of the scholars in the school. Indeed about the critical time of Evans' boyhood there were no boys in the school for several years as you may gather from a quotation I enclose. There were four schools in Stourbridge between 1808 and say, 1830 viz. CID The Grammar School of K. Edward VI C21 Oldswinford Hospital C31 Wheeler's Charity School 14D Scott's School I have ascertained that there is no trace of Evans at the Oldswinford Hospital. Wheel- er's Charity School was closed many years ago and the funds are administered by the Governors of the Grammar School. Scott's School came to an end about 20 years ago. I have the accounts for Scott's School in the early 19th century 11793-18325 but there is no mention of Evans. I am afraid, therefore, it is not possible to trace his scholastic career in Stourbridge. The name Evans is fairly common in this district and there was a very well-known surgeon, William Evans, who would be a contemporary of Frederick. From Stourbridge Evans went to live at Chadwick Hall, a fine old English manor house which is still standing. He thus continues his narrative: Henceforth my lot was cast with my uncles and aunts at Chadwick Hall, near Licky Hill, the scene of one of Cromwell's battles, where a systematic arrangement of all things obtained, from the different breeds of dogs,-the watchdog in his kennel, the water spaniel, the terrier of rat-catching propensities, the greyhound, the pointer, and the bulldog,-to the diversity of horses of the farm, the road, the saddle, and hunting, there were five hundred sheep, with a regular hereditary shepherd to change them from pasture to pasture in summer, and to attend to all their wants, and fold them in the turnip-fields all the winter. Every field on the farm was subject to a rotation of crops as regular as the seasons, which are generally bad enough for the English farmer. The farm was very hilly and woody, and dotted with five fish-ponds formed from a stream that ran through it. There was plenty of fish and game, and the woods were vocal with the great variety of singing birds, from the jackdaw to the nightingale. 2. Frederick W. Evans, Autobiography of a Shaker, Glasgow and New York, 1888, pp. 2. If. 66