Born 27 October 1804 in Cecil County, Maryland, David Evans was the oldest son of Israel Evans and Abigail Alexander. Reared in Maryland and Pennsylvania, he settled in Ohio to start a family, was baptized into the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in 1833, served as a missionary from 1833 to 1842, joined Zion's Camp in 1834, attended the School of the Prophets in 1835-6, and was ordained to the First Quorum of the Seventy in 1834. He settled in Missouri, endured persecutions including Haun's Mill Massacre, fled to Adam's County, Illinois, in 1839, moved to Nauvoo, and was ordained Bishop of Nauvoo Eleventh Ward in 1842. He captained a company of Saints to the west, arriving in Salt Lake Valley in September 1850, and reached Dry Creek, called Evansville and later Lehi, on 15 February 1851. As the first Bishop of Lehi, he served from 1851 to 1879 and was instrumental in bringing water to Lehi from American Fork Canyon in 1851 and in the incorporation of Lehi City in 1852. On 5 June 1854 he laid out the original Lehi City Plat of sixteen blocks using a pocket compass, carpenter's square and line tape, and it was later surrounded by the Fort Wall. He was elected to Utah's first Legislative Assembly, serving in 1851-2, 1856-8, and 1865-74; was appointed postmaster from 1853 to 1882; served as Lehi's second mayor from 1854 to 1860; was major of Lehi Post, Utah Military District, from 1854 to 1857; and colonel of Lehi Military District, north of Provo to Point of Mtn., from 1857 to 1865. A businessman and advocate of home industry, he operated with others a carding machine threshing machine, tannery, and the Lehi Union Exchange. The husband of seven wives and father of forty-one children and one adopted child, he was respected and revered by many for his great industry, public mindedness, charity, self acquired education, religious zeal, and friendship to the Indians. He died 23 June 1883 at Lehi, Utah.