San Francisco County
Biographies
HENRY EVERS
HENRY EVERS, Coroner
of Alameda county, was born in Bremen,
Germany, March 3, 1844, a son of John Henry and
Anna (Bergmann) Evers, both natives of what was then the kingdom
of Hanover, reaching to an age over
sixty. Grandfather Henry Evers lived to
the age of seventy-five; the grandfather, John Bergmann, was over eighty, and
his wife was seventy-four—all being of the agricultural class in Hanover.
Henry Evers was
educated in the regular schools of his native land to the age of fourteen years
and a half, when he was regularly apprenticed to a wholesale mercantile house,
serving four years. He then served in
another similar house for wages, until he set out for California,
by way of New York, in 1864,
arriving in San Francisco September
29. He served as clerk until January 1, 1865, in a retail grocery
store in the Potrero.
He took the position of bookkeeper for the firm of Lamarche
& Co., of Oakland, April 6, 1865, and has since been a resident here except
two years, 1874-’76, spent in San Francisco.
Serving as bookkeeper in Oakland
to August 1, 1866, he was
next clerk for a few months in a wholesale house in San
Francisco; and on January 1, 1867, became partner in the Oakland
house of Lamarche & Co., where he had been
bookkeeper. He remained a member of the
firm until they wound up the business, February
1, 1874. He then embarked in
mercantile business on his individual account in San
Francisco, as Henry Evers, so continuing until 1885,
when he made an entire change in his career, embarking in the business of
undertaker, in which he proved to be the right man in the right place. He moved his business to Oakland,
August 1, 1886. In 1888 he was elected Coroner on the
Republican ticket, and he filled the office with such general acceptance that
he was renominated without opposition in September,
1890, and elected in November following by a plurality of 5,544. He conducts the delicate duties of his office
with tender sympathy to the bereaved, but without losing one jot of the
necessary keenness of scrutiny wherever the circumstances of death are in the
slightest degree open to suspicion. His
official career has been alike free from over-zealous obtrusiveness and
neglectful laxity in critical cases.
Mr. Evers was
married in Oakland, August 9, 1868, to Miss Mary C. Suckert, born in New Orleans,
Louisiana, of German parents, and has five
sons: Henry, Julius, Albert, Leon
and Carl.
Transcribed
by Cathi Skyles.
Source: "The Bay of San Francisco," Vol. 2,
page 301-302, Lewis Publishing Co, 1892.
© 2005 Cathi Skyles.
California Biography Project
San Francisco County
California Statewide
Golden Nugget Library