A seminal skeptic who was, inevitably, caught up in the nexus of Forteans.
Bergen Baldwin Evans was born 19 September 1904 in Franklin, Ohio. His father, Rice Kemper, was a doctor, the fourth generation in the family to practice; his mother was Louise Cass. They had six children, Bergen the third of them. When Bergen was about five, the family relocated to Sheffield, England, as his father had given up his work as a doctor to accept clerkship in the consular service. World War I and the poor salary had him send his children back to Ohio, where they lived with an aunt. At night and on Saturdays, Bergen worked in a paper mill. He was a bright child, educated at the local schools. He matriculated at Miami University (in Oxford Ohio) when he was 15.
A need to be the smartest guy in the room seems to have developed—according to his own reckoning—from his family situation. He later said, “I don’t know quite where my iconoclasm got its roots—possibly in the fact that my father and brother were both big guys, terribly athletic and physically self-reliant, definitely the do-it-yourself type, while I was a lie-by-the-fire, ten-thumbed mollycoddle. My only revenge was to hunt out some chinks in the armor of their assurance when they were arming for battle and drop a few chiggers in. Then, by extension, to all the dogmatic and assured.”
Bergen Baldwin Evans was born 19 September 1904 in Franklin, Ohio. His father, Rice Kemper, was a doctor, the fourth generation in the family to practice; his mother was Louise Cass. They had six children, Bergen the third of them. When Bergen was about five, the family relocated to Sheffield, England, as his father had given up his work as a doctor to accept clerkship in the consular service. World War I and the poor salary had him send his children back to Ohio, where they lived with an aunt. At night and on Saturdays, Bergen worked in a paper mill. He was a bright child, educated at the local schools. He matriculated at Miami University (in Oxford Ohio) when he was 15.
A need to be the smartest guy in the room seems to have developed—according to his own reckoning—from his family situation. He later said, “I don’t know quite where my iconoclasm got its roots—possibly in the fact that my father and brother were both big guys, terribly athletic and physically self-reliant, definitely the do-it-yourself type, while I was a lie-by-the-fire, ten-thumbed mollycoddle. My only revenge was to hunt out some chinks in the armor of their assurance when they were arming for battle and drop a few chiggers in. Then, by extension, to all the dogmatic and assured.”