Cerinda Weatherly Evans (21 February 1876–14 July 1973), librarian, was born in Accomack County and was the daughter of Susan A. Russell Evans Evans and her second husband, John S. Evans, a carpenter. She never married. Evans began teaching in Accomack County in 1894, and sometime after June 1900 she moved to Newport News in order to teach arithmetic and geography at the Central School (later John W. Daniel School). Named principal of the Stonewall Jackson School in 1904, she also took charge beginning in 1910 of a program to train female high school students as a corps of public school teachers. This was a job she enjoyed until she was assigned to simultaneous duty as principal of an elementary school and the workload became overwhelming. In 1913 she accepted the position of principal of a kindergarten run by the city's largest employer, the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company.
After several years, Evans received the assignment to create a shipyard library. She selected and purchased titles on naval architecture and other nautical subjects and then organized them into a practical collection. The successful completion of this project brought her to the attention of Homer Lenoir Ferguson, the shipyard president. When he and the shipyard's owner, Archer Milton Huntington, established the Mariners' Museum in Newport News in 1930, they turned to Evans for assistance in creating the museum's library. To prepare her for the job, the museum sent her to Columbia University for library training from September 1930 to June 1931.
Evans's accomplished work in suggesting titles and organizing the purchased books led to her becoming the full-time librarian for the Mariners' Museum in September 1933. For the next fourteen years she worked diligently in the library, organizing the stacks, helping patrons and museum staff members with their research, indexing the periodicals and photograph collections, and maintaining a large collection of newspaper clippings and vertical files on all manner of nautical subjects. Evans assisted with the library's constant acquisition of books, periodicals, manuscripts, charts, and photographs for its international maritime collection related to ship construction and navigation, travel, and trade. Under her care the collections grew to include about 30,000 books and pamphlets and 50,000 photographs, as well as thousands of charts, maps, and ships' logs, among other materials.
In addition to her duties as a librarian, Evans wrote numerous scholarly articles, booklets, and pamphlets on a variety of maritime, colonial, and biographical topics. She completed a two-volume biography of Collis Potter Huntington (1954), founder of the Newport News Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company, and a companion book on his wife, Arabella Duval Huntington (1959). Within the greater Hampton Roads area, Evans became a well-regarded historian of local affairs, and she wrote many articles on the history of Newport News and Hampton. The Virginia 350th Anniversary Celebration Corporation commissioned her to write Some Notes on Shipbuilding and Shipping in Colonial Virginia (1957), which became a standard text on the subject.
Evans retired as librarian of the Mariners' Museum in December 1947. Named librarian emeritus, she kept an active schedule and could often be found in the library assisting staff and patrons and cataloging material. Ferguson insisted that Evans continue to draw a paycheck in recognition of her service to the museum. Failing health ended her visits to the library in 1968, although she regularly corresponded with former co-workers and researchers and began an active letter-writing campaign to the editorial sections of local newspapers. Cerinda Weatherly Evans died of heart failure at a Newport News retirement facility on 14 July 1973 and was buried at Saint Mary's Episcopal Church Cemetery, in Pocomoke City, Maryland.
Sources Consulted:
Birth Register, Accomack Co., Bureau of Vital Statistics (BVS), Commonwealth of Virginia Department of Health, Record Group 36, Library of Virginia (LVA); correspondence, journal, and bibliography of works in Cerinda W. Evans Papers, Mariners' Museum, Newport News; other publications include Evans, "Newport News: What's in a Name?" in Alexander Crosby Brown, ed., Newport News' 325 Years: A Record of the Progress of a Virginia Community (1946), 24–29, "Newport News: Origin of the Name," Virginia Magazine of History and Biography 55 (1947): 31–44, and Anna Hyatt Huntington (1965); Newport News Daily Press, 4 Jan. 1948, 19 Nov. 1960; Salisbury [Md.] Times, 3 Sept. 1959; BVS Death Certificate, Accomack Co., with variant 23 Feb. 1876 date of birth; obituaries in Newport News Daily Press, 15 July 1973 (portrait), and Newport News Times-Herald, 16 July 1973.
Written for the Dictionary of Virginia Biography by Josh Graml.
How to cite this page:
Josh Graml, "Cerinda Weatherly Evans (1876–1973)," Dictionary of Virginia Biography, Library of Virginia (1998– ), published 2024 (http://www.lva.virginia.gov/public/dvb/bio.asp?b=Evans_Cerinda_Weatherly, accessed [today's date]).
Return to the Dictionary of Virginia Biography Search page.
