to have been seen by R. Trevithick, whom in that case he anticipated in the adoption of the high-pressure principle. He made use of his engine for driving mill machinery; and in 1803 he constructed a steam dredging machine, which also propelled itself on land. In 1819 a disastrous fire broke out in his factory at Pittsburg, and he did not long survive it, dying at New York on the 21st of April 1819.
EVANSON, EDWARD (1731–1805), English divine, was born
on the 21st of April 1731 at Warrington, Lancashire. After
graduating at Cambridge (Emmanuel College) and taking holy
orders, he officiated for several years as curate at Mitcham. In
1768 he became vicar of South Mimms near Barnet; and in
November 1769 he was presented to the rectory of Tewkesbury,
with which he held also the vicarage of Longdon in Worcestershire.
In the course of his studies he discovered what he thought
important variance between the teaching of the Church of England
and that of the Bible, and he did not conceal his convictions.
In reading the service he altered or omitted phrases which seemed
to him untrue, and in reading the Scriptures pointed out errors
in the translation. A crisis was brought on by his sermon on the
resurrection, preached at Easter 1771; and in November 1773
a prosecution was instituted against him in the consistory court
of Gloucester. He was charged with “depraving the public
worship of God contained in the liturgy of the Church of England,
asserting the same to be superstitious and unchristian, preaching,
writing and conversing against the creeds and the divinity of
our Saviour, and assuming to himself the power of making
arbitrary alterations in his performance of the public worship.”
A protest was at once signed and published by a large number
of his parishioners against the prosecution. The case was dismissed
on technical grounds, but appeals were made to the court
of arches and the court of delegates. Meanwhile Evanson had
made his views generally known by several publications. In
1772 appeared anonymously his Doctrines of a Trinity and the Incarnation of God, examined upon the Principles of Reason and Common Sense. This was followed in 1777 by A Letter to Dr Hurd, Bishop of Worcester, wherein the Importance of the Prophecies of the New Testament and the Nature of the Grand Apostasy predicted in them are particularly and impartially considered. He also
wrote some papers on the Sabbath, which brought him into
controversy with Joseph Priestley, who published the whole
discussion (1792). In the same year appeared Evanson’s work
entitled The Dissonance of the four generally received Evangelists,
to which replies were published by Priestley and David Simpson
(1793). Evanson rejected most of the books of the New Testament
as forgeries, and of the four gospels he accepted only that
of St Luke. In his later years he ministered to a Unitarian
congregation at Lympston, Devonshire. In 1802 he published
Reflections upon the State of Religion in Christendom, in which he
attempted to explain and illustrate the mysterious foreshadowings
of the Apocalypse. This he considered the most important
of his writings. Shortly before his death at Colford, near
Crediton, Devonshire, on the 25th of September 1805, he completed
his Second Thoughts on the Trinity, in reply to a work of the
bishop of Gloucester.
His sermons (prefaced by a Life by G. Rogers) were published in two volumes in 1807, and were the occasion of T. Falconer’s Bampton Lectures in 1811. A narrative of the circumstances which led to the prosecution of Evanson was published by N. Havard, the town-clerk of Tewkesbury, in 1778.
EVANSTON, a city of Cook county, Illinois, U.S.A., on the shore of Lake Michigan, 12 m. N. of Chicago. Pop. (1900) 19,259, of whom 4441 were foreign-born; (1910 U.S. census) 24,978. It is served by the Chicago & North-Western, and the Chicago, Milwaukee & St Paul railways, and by two electric lines. The city is an important residential suburb of Chicago. In 1908 the Evanston public library had 41,430 volumes. In the city are the College of Liberal Arts (1855), the Academy (1860), and the schools of music (1895) and engineering (1908) of Northwestern University, co-educational, chartered in 1851, opened in 1855, the largest school of the Methodist Episcopal Church in America. In 1909–1910 it had productive funds amounting to about $7,500,000, and, including all the allied schools, a faculty of 418 instructors and 4487 students; its schools of medicine (1869), law (1859), pharmacy (1886), commerce (1908) and dentistry (1887) are in Chicago. In 1909 its library had 114,869 volumes and 79,000 pamphlets (exclusive of the libraries of the professional schools in Chicago); and the Garrett Biblical Institute had a library of 25,671 volumes and 4500 pamphlets. The university maintains the Grand Prairie Seminary at Onarga, Iroquois county, and the Elgin Academy at Elgin, Kane county. Enjoying the privileges of the university, though actually independent of it, are the Garrett Biblical Institute (Evanston Theological Seminary), founded in 1855, situated on the university campus, and probably the best-endowed Methodist Episcopal theological seminary in the United States, and affiliated with the Institute, the Norwegian Danish Theological school; and the Swedish Theological Seminary, founded at Galesburg in 1870, removed to Evanston in 1882, and occupying buildings on the university campus until 1907, when it removed to Orrington Avenue and Noyes Street. The Cumnock School of Oratory, at Evanston, also co-operates with the university. By the charter of the university the sale of intoxicating liquors is forbidden within 4 m. of the university campus. The manufacturing importance of the city is slight, but is rapidly increasing. The principal manufactures are wrought iron and steel pipe, bakers’ machinery and bricks. In 1905 the value of the factory products was $2,550,529, being an increase of 207.3% since 1900. In Evanston are the publishing offices of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union. Evanston was incorporated as a town in 1863 and as a village in 1872, and was chartered as a city in 1892. The villages of North Evanston and South Evanston were annexed to Evanston in 1874 and 1892 respectively.
EVANSVILLE, a city and the county-seat of Vanderburg county, Indiana, U.S.A., and a port of entry, on the N. bank of the Ohio river, 200 m. below Louisville, Kentucky—measuring by the windings of the river, which double the direct distance. Pop. (1890) 50,756; (1900) 59,007; (1910 census) 69,647. Of the total population in 1900, 5518 were negroes, 5626 were foreign-born (including 4380 from Germany and 384 from England), and 17,419 were of foreign parentage (both parents foreign-born), and of these 13,910 were of German parentage. Evansville is served by the Evansville & Terre Haute, the Evansville & Indianapolis, the Illinois Central, the Louisville & Nashville, the Louisville, Henderson & St Louis, and the Southern railways, by several interurban electric lines, and by river steamboats. The city is situated on a plateau above the river, and has a number of fine business and public buildings, including the court house and city hall, the Southern Indiana hospital for the insane, the United States marine hospital, and the Willard library and art gallery, containing in 1908 about 30,000 volumes. The city’s numerous railway connexions and its situation in a coal-producing region (there are five mines within the city limits) and on the Ohio river, which is navigable nearly all the year, combine to make it the principal commercial and manufacturing centre of Southern Indiana. It is in a tobacco-growing region, is one of the largest hardwood lumber markets in the country, and has an important shipping trade in pork, agricultural products, dried fruits, lime and limestone, flour and tobacco. Among its manufactures in 1905 were flour and grist mill products (value, $2,638,914), furniture ($1,655,246), lumber and timber products ($1,229,533), railway cars ($1,118,376), packed meats ($998,428), woollen and cotton goods, cigars and cigarettes, malt liquors, carriages and wagons, leather and canned goods. The value of the factory products increased from $12,167,524 in 1900 to $19,201,716 in 1905, or 57.8%, and in the latter year Evansville ranked third among the manufacturing cities in the state. The waterworks are owned and operated by the city. First settled about 1812, Evansville was laid out in 1817, and was named in honour of Robert Morgan Evans (1783–1844), one of its founders, who was an officer under General W. H. Harrison in the war of 1812. It soon became a thriving commercial town with an extensive river trade, was incorporated in 1819, and received a city charter in 1847. The completion of the Wabash
