Nany Evans oral history.indd - Washington Secretary of State

Evans: Yes, but my father was doing all these wonderful, exotic sorts of things. He spent
a lot of time down in Mexico as well. This is all before he met my mother. We have some
diaries and letters that he wrote. They’re really interesting because he talks about the
bandits in Peru who knew when payroll day was. He had this dry sense of humor, but he
always told one story very sincerely, so I’m assuming it’s true that he came across Butch
Cassidy one time down in Peru. They became sort of passing friends at that moment in
time. But he could have died in his encounters with bandits. My father went down to
Davenport, Florida, after he’d been to Peru and Mexico. His father had bought a lot of land
down there. It was just swamp land and my grandfather wanted my father to drain the
swamp land for development. And that’s where he met my mother.
Hughes: Lilith Jordan. What was her middle name?
Evans: It was Stoltz. And she pronounced Lilith “Lie-leth.” Mother’s father was a
Methodist minister. And the name Lilith, as my mother used to tell me, is from the
Apocrypha, which was the part of the Bible that is not usually included because of its
questionable origins. Some people say “Lill’th,” but she was “Lie-leth.” And her sister was
Eulah —aren’t those unusual names!? Mother always used to say that as a child she was
the typical minister’s daughter because she wanted to rebel against everything. She was a
rebel. If you weren’t supposed to do something, that’s just what she was going to do. She
was a suffragist, too, marching for women’s right to vote.
Hughes: I wish I had known her. I like everything I read about your mother.
Evans: Well, she was wonderful because she really enjoyed people. Amazingly enough,
she was also extremely conservative in some ways, I mean about what you should and
should not do. But she also would never pass judgment until she really got to know
somebody. She was very open to new ideas, new things, anything new.
Hughes: Who are you more like – Dad or Mom?
Evans: I hope I’m a happy combination of both.
Hughes: So how about your grandmother on your paternal side? Tell us about her.
Evans: She was Mary Elizabeth Bartlett Bell. We have two volumes of records of her
family going way back — the Underwood family and the Bartletts. It was a long- time New
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