Dr. Everts was born in the Salem Settlement and obtained his early education in local schools. He studied medicine under his physician father and another physician, and he obtained a medical degree in 1846 from the University of Indiana. He entered private practice in St. Charles, Ill., and after several years he retired to become a newspaper editor at La Porte, Indiana. In 1860, he was admitted to the bar after studying law and also served as registrar of the U.S. Land Office in Wisconsin.
Dr. Everts was surgeon to the 20th Regiment of the Indiana Volunteers through the Civil War and participated in many battles. After the war, he devoted his attention to psychiatry and diseases of the nervous system. In 1868, he was appointed Superintendent of the Indiana Hospital for the Insane, where he remained for 11 years, also occupying the Chair of Nervous and Mental Diseases at the Medical College of Indiana. In 1880, he was appointed superintendent of the Cincinnati Sanitarium, a private hospital. He served as an expert witness in medical legal cases, including the trial of Guiteau, the assassin of President Garfield, in 1881.
Dr. Everts wrote prolifically on both medical matters and non-medical literary pieces, including a volume of poetry. He was an active member of his local Academy of Medicine, the Ohio State Medical Society, and the American Medical Association, which published his paper on nervous and mental diseases in 1904. Dr. Everts was President of the Association of Medical Superintendents of American Institutions for the Insane (1885–1886).