H. TELL EVANS.

H. TELL EVANS, a member of the drug firm of Evans Brothers, is a son of one of Allen county's pioneers. His father was Hon. John M. Evans, who represented Allen county in the State Legislature near the close of the sixties and who was, at the time of his death and for some years prior, a prominent merchant of the county, doing business at Geneva. The latter was an Indiana settler and came into the county in 1857. He entered the quarter section in Carlyle township known now as the "County Poor Farm" and resided upon it till the year following the close of the war when he went to Geneva. He was associated with L. L. Northrup in a general store and was stricken down in the prime of life thirteen years after his advent to the county.

H. T. Evans is the fourth of a family of six surviving heirs of John M. Evans. He was born at the old homestead in Allen county January 29, 1863, just two years after Kansas' natal day. The early part of his life was passed in Geneva and since 1876 he has lived in Iola. He secured an ordinary training in the common schools and in his youth he engaged to learn the carpenter trade. He worked many months with the late S. P. Overmyer and it might be said that that odd character taught him the prime mysteries of the craft. One of the last acts of our subject, as a mechanic, was to erect the frame work and do the finishing on Evans Brothers' store.

When Mr. Evans first engaged in business it was as a partner with M. L. Miller, the firm being "Miller & Evans, undertakers." Two years after the formation of the firm he purchased the interest of Mrs. Miller and conducted the business alone. The disastrous fire of 1891 swept away three-fourths of his resources and wiped out a business that had been established only four years. The firm of Evans Brothers grew out of that conflagration. Tell and William J. found it necessary, from force of circumstances, and mutually helpful to unite their shattered resources in an effort to regain a place in the business world of Iola. They purchased the lot upon which was the old Stevenson drug store and erected Iola's first handsome business house. In 1892 the firm opened their, now famous, drug and stationery house, one of the conspicuously attractive places in Iola.

Realizing the late start in a new business, he took up the study of pharmacy with the determination to win. And though studying only at home, with the assistance of other members of the firm, and taking the

correspondence course of the National Institute of Pharmacy, of Chicago, Illinois, (of which he has a diploma) was ready for the State Examination of Pharmacists, in the minimum of time of experience, as prescribed by the Kansas laws, and was passed by the board at the head of a class of fifty-five.

September 29, 1896, Mr. Evans married Aline Peterson, a lady of social and musical prominence who located in Iola in 1886. She was born in the city of Chicago and reared in Plattsburg, Clinton county, Missouri, and, in 1895, took a course in the New England Conservatory of Music in Boston. The children of this union are Telline and Emily J. Evans.

Mr. Evans began the exercise of his elective franchise in 1884 by casting his presidential ballot for the "Plumed Knight," the great Secretary Blaine. His party fealty never suffers by defeat. Twice has he seen the banner of progress and prosperity fall into the hands of his political competitors and as many times has he helped to reclaim it and to restore it to its own. In local matters he has done only that which would tend to the best public service for Iola. Being in strict accord with the spirit of progress in public education he was nominated for the Board of Education in 1900 from the Fourth ward and elected. He is one of the first members of the Ancient Order of United Workmen and has represented the Iola body in the State Grand Lodge.

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