Evers Surname Meaning, History & Origin

Evers Surname Meaning

Evers is of Old Germanic origin and is a Low German, Flemish and Dutch surname originating as a patronymic form of Ever.

Ever itself was a pet form of Everard, a Germanic personal name composed of the elements eber, a wild boar, and hard, brave and hardy.  Everard came with the Normans to England, but here the resulting surname tended to be Everett.

Some Evers in England and Ireland originated from the name of the Eure or Evre region in Normandy. This name is also derived from the “wild boar” root.

Modern spelling variants of Evers have been Evert and Everts.

Evers Surname Resources on The Internet

Evers, Evert and Everts Surname Ancestry

  • from Holland, NE Germany, England and Ireland (West Meath)
  • to America, Canada and Australia

The Evers name and its variants Evert and Everts are to be found in Holland and in NE Germany, in the latter case in the Ems, Hamburg and Hanover regions. The numbers today are around 7-8,000 in Holland and 12,000 in Germany.

An early sighting of the name was Wolff Evers, born in Hanover in 1545. The birth of Guert Evert in Gelderland, Holland occurred around the year 1553.

There was another smaller cluster of Evers to be found in the German north Rhineland region of Westphalia. The name might have originated from Everdes Hof (Everdes farm) near Paderborn. The Evers name here has been traced back to 1650.

England.  The Evers surname in England seems to have had its origins in the place-name of Evre or Eure in Normandy. Evre or Eure started to become Evers in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire in the 15th and 16th centuries.

Yorkshire. Isaac Eure from Yorkshire fought on the Parliamentary side during the Civil War. He was one of the judges at the trial of Charles I, signing his death warrant, and he acted as Charles’ jailer before he came to trial. He was also a colonel in Cromwell’s army in Ireland.

The Evers name was to be found in the vicinity of present-day Leeds from the late 15th century onwards. William Evers was the vicar of Leeds in 1470 and the same or another William Evers was vicar of Whitkirk in 1495. Evers at Swillington have been traced from the late 1600’s. William Evers, a wire worker at Swillington Bridge, developed a threshing machine for winnowing corn in 1768.

An Evre family built West Ayton castle near Scarborough in the 1500’s. The Evers name was to be found nearby at Brompton and Snainton by the early 1700’s.

Worcestershire.  Henry and Elizabeth Evers were married around the year 1790 in Old Swinford, Worcestershire. Their son Samuel operated the Cradley ironworks in nearby Staffordshire. Guy Evers of the family was an English rugby international in the 1890’s and later an enthusiastic canoeist. Lancelot Evers fought in World War One and was killed in action just ten days before the ending of the war.

Ireland. The Evers name has also occurred in Ireland. It may have come from an Anglo-Norman family prominent in Meath; or it may have been an anglicization of the Gaelic O’hlomhair name. Timothy Evers was recorded as the mayor of Dublin in 1631. The name has been found particularly in Westmeath and Longford, and most particularly in Drumlish there.

Eivers has been a variant spelling. The old cemetery in Drumlish lists fourteen Evers and four Eivers.

America. The Dutch were early arrivals. Evers-like names for in the 17th century were Elise Everts who arrived in 1645; Jan Evertsen a mason who came to the New Amstel colony in Delaware in 1661; and Hendricks Evertsen who came to New York in 1662.

Evert.  The main early numbers were in New York state. Evert here could either be a first name or a last name. Evert Duyckinck for instance was a Dutch painter who came to New York in 1638.

Gustav Evert arrived from Mecklenburg in north Germany in 1869 and made his home in Waukesha county, Wisconsin.

Meanwhile Peter Evert came from Luxemburg to Chicago in the 1880’s. His grandson Jimmy, born in Chicago, moved to Florida in 1948 and for almost fifty years was the tennis director for the city of Fort Lauderdale. His daughter Chris Evert was one of the world’s top women tennis players in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Everts.  The Everts in Vermont were originally Evarts whose forebears had come to Connecticut from England in the 1660’s. Truman Everts was a pioneer of the American West.

“Truman Everts was part of the 1870 expedition exploring the area which later became the Yellowstone National Park. He was lost for 37 days and became more widely known after writing about his experiences for Scribner’s Monthly.”  

Edmund Everts from the same Connecticut line had been a Union soldier during the Civil War and afterwards made his home in Otter Tail county, Minnesota. The lumber company that he started there in 1882 still flourishes under his descendants.

Evers.  The main Evers numbers in America were from Germany. Most of the Evers who came in the 19th century headed West. Among them were:

  • Henry Evers who departed Bremen for San Francisco in 1864. He embarked on various businesses in Oakland before deciding to become an undertaker. He was elected the Coroner of Oakland in 1888.
  • Charles Evers and his wife who came to America in 1874 and settled to farm in Crawford county, Iowa.
  • John Evers from Hanover who came to America in 1882 and first settled in Nebraska. There he again farmed and worked at his trade for ten years before acquiring land in Barton county, Kansas where he built his farm.
  • and Ferdinand and Laura Eversz who came to South Dakota in the 1880’s. The “z” in their name was quietly dropped in the next generation. Their son Oswald migrated north to Saskatchewan in Canada in 1905 in search of new farming land.

Heinrich Evers left Germany as a young man to come to America on a sailing ship. However, a fierce storm at sea blew the vessel onto the rocks off Newfoundland where it broke up. Heinrich was lucky to get ashore on a barrel.

Although aiming for America, he ended up marrying and settling down in Canada. But many of his children still had the American dream. His son Johannes Evers came to Clearfield township in North Dakota in 1882 and other Evers later followed.

Irish arrivals have included:

  • Joseph Evers, a cooper, and his wife Mary who came with their family to New York City from Westmeath in 1842
  • and Richard Evers from Longford who arrived in Missouri in the early 1870’s and later made his home in Hill county, Texas.

John and Ellen Evers were Irish immigrants who had settled in Troy, New York in the 1870’s. John’s brother Tom was a professional baseball player; as were John’s two sons Johnny and Joe. Johnny Evers became a famous player in the title-winning Chicago Cubs team and was inducted into baseball’s Hall of Fame.

Canada. The most notable Evers in Canada was Jewish. Born in 1914 in Winnipeg to Meyer Auerbach, the principal of the local Talmud Torah, he adopted the name of Muni Evers and trained as a pharmacist before heading west to British Columbia. He was the long-term serving mayor of New Westminster – from 1969 to 1983.

Australia. Titus Evers from Batley in Yorkshire was transported to Australia on the Parmelia in 1832. After serving out his sentence he became a respected member of the Molong, NSW community and left a large number of descendants.

His son Titus for instance, who had married Jane Johnston, raised ten children and left 58 grandchildren and 25 great grandchildren on his death in 1909.

Evers Surname Miscellany

Evers Origins in England.  A Norman family in England was said to have taken their name from Evre or Eure in Normandy, a region that derived its name from the wild boar.

The Evre or Eure family held the manors of Warkworth in Northumberland and Clavering in Essex in the late 12th century.  The Clavering line died out. William Eure of Warkworth was created a baron and Ralph Eure built Witton castle in Durham in 1410. The family later held West Ayton castle near Scarborough.  The barony lasted until 1707 when Ralph Eure, the final baron, died.

Evre or Eure descendants were also to be found in Lincolnshire and Yorkshire.

From the Lincolnshire side came Peter Eure or Evers of Washborough, an MP for the county in the late 1500’s.  His marriage in his fifties caused his contemporary John Chamberlain to comment:

“I am sure it will be news that Master Evers hath got a young wife in Lincolnshire, where he was hammering about her all last term, and hath not yet showed his face among his friends.  Evers became a father of four children in five years.”

There were more Evers descendants in Yorkshire where its early appearance was in the vicinity of present-day Leeds. Evre or Eure became either Evers or Vevers.

Early Dutch Everts in New York State  

Name Date of Birth County
Jacob Evert 1674 Albany
Johannes Evertsen 1680 Albany
Wendel Evert 1680 Albany
Anthony Evert 1680 Albany
Hendrick Evert 1686 Ulster (Kingston)
Jansen Evert 1698 New York City
Jan Evertsen 1698 Albany
William Evert 1699 Albany

Evers and Evert Arrivals in America.  The following Evers and Evert numbers were recorded from passenger lists on ship arrival in America.

Numbers Evers Evert
Germany    401   200
Ireland     78
England     49     14
Total    527    214

John Evers in Kansas.  John Evers was born in Hanover, Germany in 1857.  He worked on the farm and as a carpenter until 1882 when he came to America and first settled in Nebraska.  There he again farmed and worked at his trade for ten years before acquiring land in Barton county, Kansas.

He was justly proud of his Wheat Valley Farm.  A large two story frame house, containing ten rooms and a kitchen, took the place of his former residence.  The barn, sheds and other outbuildings were in keeping with his home and the care for the grain and stock of the farm.  There was an abundance of shade and it was said that the whole ensemble presented a beautiful appearance.

His eldest son John Herman Evers lived and farmed nearby in Pawnee county.

Johannes Evers in North Dakota.  Johannes or John Evers came to Clearfield township in Griggs county, North Dakota in the spring of 1882. He was just 22.  He worked there for a number of years before receiving his land under the Homestead Act.

He became skilled in all the trades needed in this frontier community – a plasterer, a stonemason, a tanner of wolf and badger hides, a small game hunter, a butcher, and a farmer. When he first came to North Dakota he carried a double-barrelled pistol – hand-loaded – to shoot ducks, prairie chickens, geese, and rabbits for food.  He took eggs from wild nests to use for food.

He put in many hours roaming the forests with a sack which he filled with tree seeds, ash and box elder. He had plowed a strip of land on the west edge of his homestead to plant into trees.  This freshly plowed shelterbelt saved his buildings from the great prairie fire.

He returned in 1891 to Ontario, the place of his birth, to spend a few months to pick out a wife.  He found one there, Sarah Hellwig, and they were married in Ontario before returning to the Evers homestead in North Dakota.

Living was hard.  But they could see that they were slowly getting ahead.   One fall there were only seven pennies left after the bills were paid. Sarah wondered how they would ever last through the winter.  Springtime found the same seven pennies still saved.

Evers Names

  • Johnny Evers was a famous baseball player of the early 1900’s, part of the great double play combination of the Chicago Cubs known as “Tinker-to-Evers-to-Chance.” 
  • Medger Evers was an African American civil rights activist who was assassinated in Mississippi in 1963. 
  • Chris Evert was one of the world’s top women tennis players in the 1970’s and 1980’s.

Evers Numbers Today

  • 1,000 in the UK (most numerous in Yorkshire)
  • 6,000 in America (most numerous in Florida)
  • 2,000 elsewhere (most numerous in Canada)

.

Click here for return to front page

Written by Colin Shelley

Leave a Reply

Required fields are marked *