The American Cyclopædia (1879)/Evans, Frederick William

EVANS, Frederick William, presiding elder of the community of Shakers at New Lebanon, Columbia co., N. Y., born in Leominster, England, June 9, 1808. His father settled in the United States in 1820, and apprenticed him to a hatter in New York. He was a diligent student in his leisure hours, was attracted by the theories of Owen and Fourier, and after a brief visit to England joined the Shaker community, whose leader he became in the United States. He has published “Tests of Divine Revelation,” “Anne Lee, or Shakers and Shakerism,” “Compendium,” “Autobiography of a Shaker,” and “Religious Communism.”