Jacob Evans – US Navy

This past Sunday afternoon, I took a little ride here in Avery County. I was researching something and got distracted by a couple of cemeteries. One of them was the Fall Creek Baptist Church Cemetery, also known as the Fall Creek Graveyard. In this cemetery, I found the grave marker for Jacob Evans. There was a marker (one of the flat bronze type, stating that he had served in the United States Navy during the war. I did some digging this morning and found Evans in the Navy Survivor Certificates. He has an interesting story. Evans was born in 1847 in Surry County, North Carolina. In 1865, he was living in West Virginia and working on a steamboat. On March 1, 1865, he enlisted in the United States Navy in Cairo, Illinois. He served aboard the USS Nymph, Forest Rose, and Red Rover. He was in and out of the hospital while in service, for a variety of reasons, including diarrhea, lame foot, fever, cough, and influenza. Evans was issued a medical discharge September 1, 1865. Evans moved around quite a bit after the war. He was married for the first time in 1870 in Surry County. His first wife was dead by 1900. In 1906, Evans was living in Cranberry (then in Mitchell County). In 1909, he had relocated to Sullivan County, Tennessee. In 1911, Evans married Jane Greer in Elizabethton, Tennessee. They returned to Elk Park, now in Avery County, to live. In 1913, Evans was in the Soldiers Home in Washington County, Tennessee. Evans soon put in for a transfer and, in 1918, was in Montgomery County, Ohio, in another Soldiers Home. It is that year that he applied for and was granted a divorce, which was granted by a Montgomery County, Ohio, judge. The divorce was based upon the idea (fact) that Mrs. Evans was not fulfilling her responsibilities as a wife, even though it was Jacob Evans that left and removed himself several hundred miles away. When a month Mrs. Evans later was informed that she was no longer married, she wrote the pension office, stating that this was the first time she has heard of it, and that Jacob had abandoned her months beforehand and she had not heard from him. Of course, this is only part of the story. The rest is probably lost. In 1921, Jacob Evans returned to Johnson County, Tennessee, and in 1924, was back in Avery County. He required a nurse, who was Robert Church. Evans died at the home of Robert Church in 1926.