Margaret Gray Evans

Evans was First Lady of Colorado for her husband and her son-in-law, Samuel Hitt Elbert, who was a widower when he became governor.

[2]: 19 She is one of the Daughters of the American Revolution through her great-grandfather Pardon Gray and a descendant of two men on the Mayflower, Francis Cooke and Richard Warren.

[2]: 19 Her sister Cornelia married Orrington Lunt, a wealthy grain broker who also helped found Northwestern University with John Evans.

[3] Margaret and her son William moved to Colorado in November 1862 when her husband had sufficiently settled his affairs.

[2]: 21–22 Margaret traveled to Washington, D.C., with her stepdaughter Josephine and niece Cornelia Gray Lunt to attend Abraham Lincoln's second inauguration.

[3] Margaret lived in London, England in the mid-1870s, during which John Evans had experienced losses due to mining and railroad investments.

[2]: 19, 21–23 During her husband's administration, there was a flood and fire in Denver, famine, and fear of attacks by Native Americans.

"[2]: 23–25 In the 1870s, she supervised the expansion of their home into a three-story house, which served again as an executive manor when her son-in-law became the governor from 1873 to 1874.

According to author Helen Canon, "She brought to these new tasks purposeful ambition, a vigorous mind, a Puritan conscience which forbade her to waste time, and a personal philosophy that 'a New Englander must never be beaten.

She asked her son, William Gray Evans, who operated the Denver Tramway Company to let children ride for free.

[6] She and her husband were involved in the design and construction of two Gothic churches, Evans Memorial Chapel, built in the memory of Josephine Evans Elbert and dedicated on October 10, 1878, and the Grace Methodist Church, which was dedicated on January 27, 1889.

[2]: 28  She served on the Colorado Seminary (now University of Denver) board of trustees from 1880 to 1900 and was a patron of the school's Fine Arts department.

[8] She was a member and president of the Denver Fortnight Club which was a "union of congenial minds for study and discussion and for the furtherance of good in practical ways."

She went to Europe in the fall of 1870 and established a home in London where her daughter Anne Evans was born on January 23, 1871.

[3] Margaret Evans died on September 7, 1906, in Denver, Colorado and is buried next to her husband at Riverside Cemetery.

Margaret Gray Evans, wife of John Evans , governor of Colorado Territory , Northwestern University Archives
Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor by William Halsall (1882)
John Evans House, Denver, about 1870s
Evans Memorial Chapel codesigned by John and Margaret Gray Evans and built by John Evans after the death of his daughter, Josephine Evans Elbert . It is located on the University of Denver campus
Byers–Evans House , Denver, about 1889, when the photograph was taken of Evans family members. It was the home of William Gray Evans beginning 1889. In 1900, Margaret Gray Evans and her daughter Anne Evans moved into the house.