Evarts family

Jeremiah Evarts (1781-1831): author, editor, lawyer, and philanthropist; editor of the Panoplist; member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

Jeremiah Evarts, son of James and Sarah Todd Evarts, was born February 3, 1781, in Sunderland, Vermont. The family moved to Georgia, Vermont, six years later. In January, 1798, Jeremiah Evarts went to East Guilford, Connecticut, where he studied with the Rev. John Elliot. In September of the same year, he entered Yale College.

Evarts attended Yale during the presidency of Timothy Dwight at a period when religious revival was beginning at the college. In his senior year, Evarts experienced a religious conversion which led him to join the Church in the spring of 1802.

After graduation, Evarts returned to his home in Vermont for a period of time before accepting the position of principal of the Caledonia County Grammar School in Peacham, Vermont, in April, 1803. One year later, Evarts, having decided to study law, entered the New Haven law office of Judge Charles Chauncey. Jeremiah Evarts was admitted to the Connecticut Bar Association in July, 1806, and practiced law in New Haven until 1810.

In 1804 Jeremiah Evarts married Mehetabel Sherman Barnes, daughter of Roger Sherman and widow of Daniel Barnes, who had one son, Daniel, by her previous marriage. Jeremiah and Mehetabel Evarts had five children: Mary, Martha, John Jay, Sarah, and William Maxwell.

While living in New Haven, Jeremiah Evarts contributed articles to the Panoplist, first published in 1805 in Massachusetts. Edited and written by Jedidiah Morse, Leonard Woods, and others, the magazine represented the views of orthodox Congregationalism. During the years 1805 to 1809, the Panoplist actively encouraged the union of Congregational churches in a General Association and the founding of Andover Theological Seminary.

In January, 1810, Jeremiah Evarts abandoned the practice of law to become the editor of the Panoplist . He left New Haven and settled with his family in Charlestown, Massachusetts. Six years later, he moved to Boston, where he resided until his death in 1831.

Jeremiah Evarts edited the Panoplist from 1810 until 1820, when he was forced to discontinue its publication because of other commitments. As editor, he wrote on issues of social reform, such as slavery and the temperance movement, reviewed works on religious subjects, and defended the doctrines of Calvinism. He viewed with alarm the growing Unitarian movement within the Congregational Church., since he believed it to be incompatible with orthodox Congregationalism. This issue was heatedly contested by both sides, and the controversy was mirrored in the pages of the Panoplist .

The early years of the nineteenth century in New England saw the formation of charitable and educational organizations, the founding of societies for the dissemination of Bibles and religious tracts, as well as increasingly widespread domestic and foreign missionary endeavors. An important function of the Panoplist was to keep the Christian public informed of the existence and progress of such ventures.

While editor of the Panoplist, Jeremiah Evarts was active in the organization of the Massachusetts Bible Society and served as manager of the American Bible Society. He was also a vice-president of the American Education Society and an active member of the Park Street Congregational Church in Boston.

Jeremiah Evarts had been a strong advocate and an early member of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, founded in 1810. Evarts was elected treasurer of the Board in 1811 and a member of the Prudential Committee in 1812. As treasurer, he worked closely with Samuel Worcester, who was corresponding secretary during the same period. When Worcester's health forced him to leave Boston for a warmer climate in January, 1821 (he died in June of that year), Evarts assumed the duties of corresponding secretary as well. He continued to hold both offices until 1822. At the annual meeting of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions in September of that year, Henry Hill was elected treasurer and Jeremiah Evarts was elected corresponding secretary, a position which he held until his death in 1831. Evarts' duites also included the editorship of the Missionary Herald, published by the A. B. C. F. M. to record its proceedings and activities.

As treasurer, corresponding secretary, and a member of the Prudential Committee of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, Evarts was influential in shaping the policies and direction of American missionary enterprises at home and abroad. As a special agent of the A. B. C. F. M., he personally visited, on several occasions between 1818 and 1830, missions to the Cherokee and Choctaw nations in the South. (A chronology of the journeys undertaken by Evarts on behalf of the A. B. C. F. M. follows this biographical sketch.)

Visits to mission stations increased Evarts' fears for the physical survival, as well as the moral and spiritual well-being, of the Southern tribes. In 1827 and 1828, the Georgia state legislature asserted the claim that it could take possession, at will, of Cherokee lands within the chartered limits of the state. Alabama and Mississippi adopted similar laws respecting Indians within their boundaries. Removal of the Indians to territory west of the Mississippi, Evarts believed, would decimate their numbers and offer no assurance that the same action would not be taken against them in the future.

Sympathetic to the Cherokees' efforts to seek justice through the courts and the Congress, and convinced that the United States government was morally bound to honor its treaty obligations, Jeremiah Evarts actively espoused the Indian cause. In an attempt to place the merits of the Indians' case before the American people, Evarts wrote a series of essays defending the legal rights of the Cherokees to their land. Published in the National Intelligencer, from August to December, 1829, under the pseudonym, "William Penn," the essays were reproduced in the newspapers and circulated in a pamphlet edition.

Since a bill on the removal of the Indians was to be introduced in the first session of the 21st Congress (December 7, 1829 - May 31, 1830), Evarts encouraged public meetings of concerned citizens, drafted petitions to the Congress which were endorsed by leading citizens in New York and Boston, and wrote a memorial to Congress on behalf of the Cherokees from the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions.

When a bill authorizing the President to remove the Indians was passed by Congress in the spring of 1830, Evarts was discouraged by the outcome. Nevertheless, he continued his efforts, editing a pamphlet of speeches on the Indian bill, and writing articles for the Missionary Herald, the New York Observer, and the North American Review . In November, 1830, he contributed two additional essays by "William Penn" to the National Intelligencer, and in January, 1831, drafted a second memorial to Congress from the A. B. C. F. M. on the state of the Indians.

Evarts had to abandon plans to go to Washington on behalf of the Cherokees in the early part of 1831. As his health progressively worsened, he was advised in February of that year to leave Boston for a milder climate. He arrived at Havana, Cuba, early in March. After a six-week stay, Evarts mistakenly believed his condition had greatly improved and sailed to Savannah. After a brief visit, he proceeded to the home of friends in Charleston, where he died on May 10, 1831.