John Evans from Fairfax County, Virginia worked as a hired joiner occasionally at Mount Vernon between 1779 and 1788. The exact nature of Evans' work is not specified in the surviving records, but he appears to have worked at Mount Vernon between April and November of 1779, for a period of 138 days.
In 1782, when George Washington was redesigning his stables and coach house, he explained to temporary estate manager Lund Washington that he should consult "Evans if he is a man capable of design upon the subject." In addition, Evans was paid twice in 1788 for painting Venetian blinds.
Evans is mentioned in Fairfax County Court records several times between 1762 and 1773. In 1762, for example, a young man named Daniel Bernard was apprenticed to Evans to be taught the "art and Trade of a Joiner and Carpenter."1
While at Mount Vernon in 1779, the charges against Evans’ account included four barrels of corn, wool, weaving linen fabric, bacon, salt, and work done at the Blacksmith Shop.2 In April of 1783, Evans was paid for working at Mount Vernon for 240 days at a rate of eight shillings per day. Between January of 1782 and April of 1783, Evans' account was charged with a bushel of salt, fourteen and a half barrels of corn, twenty-six and a half bushels of corn, and thirty-one and a half pounds of wool. John Evans also paid four shillings to Eleanor Calvert Custis, for having his mare bred to her stud horse, Leonidas.3
Notes: 1. Mesick, Cohen & Waite, "Building Trades," Mount Vernon: Historic Structure Report, 2-31.
2. "John Evans…joiner – Dr….Cr.," Lund Washington Account Book, 86.
3. "John Evans------Dr….Cr." and "Dr….John Evans…Cr.," Lund Washington Account Book, 111, 120.
