The Evans House was a double-pen log structure at the corner of Guyler and Nashville Streets in Ringgold, where the widow Evans supported her family before the war by taking in boarders, including nurses from local Confederate hospitals. One was Fannie A. Beers of Pensacola, Florida, whose husband served in the Confederate Army and who had volunteered early in the war as a nurse, first working at Gainesville, Alabama, where wounded from the Battle of Shiloh were treated, before that hospital was transferred to Ringgold. Beers later recalled staying in Mrs. Evans's log house, nearly a quarter of a mile from the courthouse used as the hospital, along a road through pine woods often blocked by drifted snow or slush, and she wrote that despite the bitter cold, the sick needed closer attention. Another boarder was Kate Cumming of Edinburgh, Scotland, who came to Ringgold on August 31, 1862, to enter one of the hospitals there and soon moved into Mrs. Evans's home, where she praised her hostess's excellent table and recorded that she charged $1 per day. On September 8, Kate again wrote warmly of Mrs. Evans and noted a prayer meeting held during a visit from one of her sons, a Methodist preacher. Kate later worked with the wounded from the Battle of Chickamauga and remembered the rough roads, the many wagons carrying the wounded to Ringgold, and injured men traveling on foot. Like several Ringgold citizens, Mrs. Evans fled her boarding house to hide in the woods when the Federal army invaded, and when she returned after the Battle of Ringgold Gap, she found Ringgold under federal occupation for the rest of the war.

Photo: Brandon Fletcher

Photo: Dale K. Benington

Photo: Dale K. Benington

Photo: David Tibbs

Photo: David Tibbs

Photo: David Tibbs

Photo: David Tibbs

Photo: David Tibbs