Looking back: "The most noble character in Bega's history"

Mr Bayley described the doctor as  “self-denying, self forgetting and great hearted”.

Montague Frederick Evershed was born on March 2, 1841, at Billinghurst in Sussex, England.

His father and three brothers were all doctors.

Montague served five years as an apprentice to a doctor in Arundell, Sussex. After his apprenticeship he  went to the famous Guy's Hospital for three years and gained his degree.

He then practised for five years in Bedfordshire and could have had his father's practice but, like so many young men of his times, he had the wandering spirit and became ship's surgeon to the sailing ship Sobraon.

In the Sobraon Dr Evershed made several trips to Australia and other parts of the world, and so slow were the powers of sailing in those days that it took two years to make two journeys from England to Australia and back.

Later on Dr Evershed made a trip to New Zealand, returning to Sydney in 1878, and then on to Bega.

He came down in one of the little schooners of those days, and landed in Merimbula, where he was met by Mr Henry Wren who drove him up, and at Wolumla the Doctor met the first Bega man he had seen, the late Mr William Allan, and they became lifelong friends.

After practising here for a while Dr Evershed contemplated moving to Bombala, but fortunately for Bega, he was induced to stay here. He married Miss Welby, whose father was then schoolmaster at Bega, and afterwards proprietor of the Bega Gazette.

The union was a happy one in the truest sense. She had also seen much of the world having been born in Calcutta, India, and educated in England, only a few miles from where the Doctor was born.

The young couple lived for some years in the house on the corner of Upper and Parker Streets. Subsequently they resided for many years on Chapel Hill and later on the Doctor had a fine brick house erected in Parker Street, where they lived ever since. (Bega District News).

More on Dr Evershed next week.