Family Tree Maker's Genealogy Site: Genealogy Report: Descendants of John Yates

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Descendants of John Yates

Generation No. 1

1. JOHN¹ YATES was born 1790 in Virginia, and died 1886. He married (1) ROSANN MCBRIDE, daughter of JOHN MCBRIDE and NANCY CUMMINGS. She was born May 1833 in Tennessee, and died February 22, 1915 in Van Buren County, Tennessee. He married (2) ELIZABETH NICHOLS. She was born 1792 in Virginia, and died Unknown. He married (3) LAVINA COLLINS. She died Unknown.

Notes for JOHN YATES:
"REV. JOHN YATES. METHODIST PREACHER AND HIS THIRTY-THREE CHILDREN"

"Rev. John Yates, an early Methodist preacher, settled in Hickory Valley, White County, neighbor to the Lewis, Wallace, Passon and other families. Some of his descandants are said to have been prominant in WHITE COUNTY, and he appears to have had plenty of descendants, in view of the fact that he became the father of no less than thirty-three children. He used to preach out in the Cumberland mountains and it is said that he would sometimes ride to his appointments steer-back, always riding a steer who could climb the long steep hills. For some mysterious reason, never explained, he had killed his horse with a pocket-knife, slitting its throat. This crime (?) took place under a poplar tree, whose leaves thereafter all turned white, and the people said it was because of the cold-blooded act of Parson Yates. It was the only known "White-Leaf Poplar" in WHITE COUNTY.

Rev. John Yates lived to be ninety-six years of age."

Worth S. Ray, Tennessee Cousins, A History of Tennessee People, p. 520.

Ref: Yates Publishing, FGSE, 1598.052, 1598.053 and 1598.054 Doris J. Welch, Sparta, TN.

John Yates was a Methodist preacher and lived in Hickory Valley. He killed his horse with his pocket knife under a poplar, later known as the white leaf poplar, which could be distinguished for miles. No one know why he killed the horse, but many people of that day believed that the tragic death of the horse under the tree had something to do with the tree turning white. Mr. Yates was noted in several ways. He marred and had thirty-three children, more than one figuring in White County history. A number of his descendents have been prominent in White County affairs. Yates preached in many parts of the County. One of his preaching places was out on Cumberland Mountain seven miles from his home. He always rade a steer to this appointment. Like most of the early ministers, the last five minutes of his sermon was a studied and practised conclusion about Gabriel blowing his trumpet. Ministers vied with each other in that day as to which would have the most eloquent and effective piece of oratory. Yates was endowed with a wonderful voice, so when Yates would reach the mountain top on the way to his appointment, he would practise on that part of his sermon that had to do with Gabriel blowing his trumpet. One fine Sunday morning while practicing thus, a man with a gun came out of the bushes and proceeded to curse the minister, saying, "I came out here to kill a deer this morning for necessary meat for my family, while you come along bellowing like the Bull of Basham until you've scared every deer off the top of the mountain." Yates lived to be ninety-six years old.

Ref: History of White County, Tennessee, by Rev. Monroe Seals, Pages 86-87
The Reprint Company Publishers
Spartanburg, S.C.
1974

1850 White County Census, District II

284 Farmer ($500)

John Yates                  60      m      VA
Elizabeth                        58      f      TN
Viny                        24      m      TN
John (farmer)                  22      m      TN
Elizabeth                        17      f      TN
Larkin (farmer)                  15      m      TN
Wyat                        13      m      TN
John H. Graham                  8      m      TN

The following tale came from the Internet at www.sparkman.org.

THE TRADE

There was a place and time,...when the idea of each household having a telephone or a television seemed like fantasy. Although I was very young, I had the good fortune to live for a while in that place and time. It was the hills of Tennessee in the late 1940's and early 1950's.

People usually tried to finish with supper by six-thirty in the evening, because it was understood that seven o'clock was the start of visiting time. You never knew who might come visiting;...they couldn't call you and tell they were coming. On some nights you might have two or three A-Model Fords parked in your yard at the same time...visiting.

The grown folks would generally sit on the porch and talk if the weather was warm...and the younguns would play. Then when it started getting good and dark the grown folks would generally move indoors and light a lamp (or turn on an electric light if they had electricity),...and the youngsters had to come in and sit and be quiet while the adults talked. By the time the kids got corralled, all the comfortable chairs had usually already been taken. I have slept on coal piles that were more comfortable than some of those cane-bottom straight chairs that I fell asleep in while listening to talk about raising tobacco, doctoring cows, canning beans, and what a "sweet old boy" Harry Truman was.

Two places that I always liked to visit...and never fell asleep in my chair...were the home of Uncle Fred & Aunt Nora Sparkman and the home of Uncle Grover Aunt Angie Sparkman. Grover & Angie had electricity; Fred & Nora didn't.

Uncle Fred stood about five-foot-seven, wore a black hat, and a pair of glasses with little bitty lenses like hippies wear. His normal tone of voice was a raspy baritone, but he squeaked a little when he got excited. His daddy had been in the Big War...(of the early 1860's). Fred could sit there by the coal-oil lamp and tell tales for a week and never tell the same tale twice...and I could have listened to him forever. He kept a WWI-vintage .45 automatic handy on the mantelpiece...along with a few dozen bottles of patent medicine with brown labels. I guess the labels were brown because the bottles of medicine had been aging there on the mantel since before the depression. Fred ran a grist mill...pulled it with the power-take-off of a 1930's-vintage John Deere tractor. We used to shell corn on Friday night and go get Fred to grind it on Saturday. I sure loved to hear that old John Deere run. If you've ever spent a couple of hours shelling corn, you probably know about blisters.

Fred's brother-in-law Grover lived up the road a little piece in a big white house right in the center of the settle-ment...(Sparkmantown). He was a good man;...hard working, honest, fairly tall, blushed easily and spectacularly;...you could hear him laugh half-a-mile. A century prior, his house had been the headquarters of his wife Angie's grandpa's fifteen-hundred-acre plantation. The hand-dug well at the end of the front porch had the best water in it you ever tasted. If that old house could have talked, it could have told a lot. Grover and Angie could tell a lot also when they got wound up.

We visited a lot just like everybody else. I liked to visit homes where there were kids to play with, but never balked at going down to Fred's or to Grover's.

My Daddy did not grow up in Sparkmantown;.....and did not have a total grasp on the fact that, for all the talking that was done, there were a few things that just weren't talked about in Sparkmantown. One of these things innocently popped up in conversation one night when we were visiting down at Grover's. Daddy was telling about some of the strange stories that he had heard since coming to Van Buren County,...and gave an example of a situation in which a Van Buren County man had left his wife at home and gone away to fight in the War Between the States,.....was not heard from for a long period of time;...his wife figured he was dead...so she married someone else. Then, a while later, the "original" husband came home and found his wife living with a "new" husband. The "new" husband and the "original" husband were said to have sat down to work things out;...and at the end of the discussion, the "original" husband rode away carrying the "new" husband's prize shotgun...and the "new" husband kept the wife. Daddy told this story in the spirit of good humor;....but I remember things being sort of quiet there in Grover's & Angie's house for a few minutes after Daddy told that story.

When we had finished our visit, and were in the truck headed for home, Mama said to Daddy, "I wish I could have reached and pinched you while you were telling about that shotgun trade;.....THAT WAS GROVER'S GRANDPA!" I remember things being sort of quiet there in the truck the rest of the way home.

More than forty years later, something nudged a compartment in my memory, and the conversation of that evening at Grover's & Angies was recalled. At this time, however, with age having diverted my curiosity toward non-childish things,...I proceeded to go looking for the identity of Grover's GRAND-MA...(since it was reasonable that she might have been closely involved with some of the capers of Grover's GRAND-PA).

Of Grover's two grandmas, I quickly focused on his maternal grandma....Rosie McBride Hayes Yates.

Rosie McBride appears to have given birth to an illegitemate daughter, Lodema, sometime in the mid-1850's. I say this because Lodema used the name McBride when she got married to Drew Spears many years later.

According to the Van Buren County, Tennessee marriage records, Rosie married Jacob Hayes (Hais) on November 1, 1855. The 1850 census found a Jacob Hayes living in the household of Amanda Hayes in District 11 of White County . It would seem reasonable that this was the same Jacob Hayes that married Rosie.

I have not yet found where Jacob and Rosie were living when the 1860 census was taken.

Madison Hayes,...however, is found in the 1860 census....living in the household of John Yates, a preacher who gained considerable notoriety in his time. Preacher John Yates is said to have been born in Virginia in 1791,....and to have participated in the War of 1812. He is credited with having killed his horse by cutting its throat with a pocket knife;...and with riding a STEER thereafter,...with wearing a six-shooter while he preached,....and being the father of 33 children (I have found the names of more than 20 of them).

I find that Jacob Hayes and James M. Hayes (James Madison Hayes, without a doubt) both joined the Confederate Army at the same place on the same day....Camp Smartt in Warren County, Tennessee...on September 6, 1861. Both went to Company C, 35th Tennessee. It is believable that these two Hayes boys were well acquainted;...and possibly related. I have not established, however, that they were brothers.

Military records show that James M. Hayes....died from disease....June 10, 1862....near Tupelo, Mississippi.

Military records also show that Jacob Hayes...deserted his unit...in Kentucky...September 4, 1862;...remained missing for "6 months and 27 days"...and then rejoined his unit on April 8, 1862.

On July 1, 1863, Jacob appears to have "gone over the hill" again...this time taking with him a musket, 40 cartridges, and 52 caps...all being worth the stated amount of $71.45. He appears to have again returned to his unit (???);....because there is an entry in the records that show a J. Hayes of the 35th Tennessee receiving medical attention for a fractured right tibia on October 21, 1864 at Floyd House hospital.

I can only speculate of the travels and activities of Jacob Hayes during those time periods that he was absent without leave;....but he must have had good explanations...to have been accepted back by his officers after desertion (people were known to be shot for desertion in those days). Also, it would be easy to believe that he might have been in a poor state of mind...with his friend (and possible relative) James M. Hayes having just died...and with the news of his wife Rosie having taken up with another man. Could he possibly have gone back to Van Buren County to try and work things out with Rosie?

We have enough written documents to be reasonably sure that.....Rosie McBride Hayes and Preacher John Yates......set up housekeeping.... while Jacob Hayes was away "doing his patriotic duty" in the War between the States. We also have information that, not-withstanding the preacher's age, Rosie gave birth to at least seven children named Yates:

(1) Lee Grant Yates, born Jan. 21, 1862 (possibly the child of Jacob Hayes,..."adopted" by the Preacher),
(2) Jabel Yates, born Feb. 14, 1863
(3) Wayman Yates, born 1866,
(4) Lucinda Yates, born July 8, 1871,
(5) Barfine Yates, born March, 1872,
(6) Luther Clinton Yates, born November 4, 1875, and
(7) Mary Evaline Yates, born 1877

I do not know what eventually happened to Jacob Hayes,...nor do I know if he became an avid quail hunter and frequently purchased shotgun shells in the years following the War between the States;....and I have never found a single word of text that confirms that the "shotgun trade" actually happened....(I doubt that I ever could).

Given, however,....the memory of those few words my Daddy spoke...in innocent fun...that night in old Sparkmantown so many years ago...and the remarkable consistencies in the public documents crying out to suggest that those spoken words might have hit close to the brutal truth;....I suppose I now understand why a few moments of silence followed the "funny story" Daddy told.

More About JOHN YATES:
Fact 1: 1860 Van Buren County Census, listed as Minister of the Gospel
Fact 2: 1870 Van Buren County census, listed as Farm Laborer

More About ROSANN MCBRIDE:
Fact 1: May 1833, Birth as listed on Headstone
Fact 2: Burial in McElroy Cemetery, Van Buren County, Tennessee

Children of JOHN YATES and ROSANN MCBRIDE are:

2.	i.	LODEMA² YATES, b. August 14, 1854; d. October 15, 1923, Van Buren County, Tennessee.
3.	ii.	LEE GRANT YATES, b. January 21, 1862; d. June 7, 1897, Van Buren County, Tennessee.
4.	iii.	JABEZ YATES, b. February 14, 1863; d. April 20, 1938.
	iv.	WAYMON YATES, b. 1866; d. Unknown.
5.	v.	LUCINDA YATES, b. July 8, 1871; d. February 25, 1947, Van Buren County, Tennessee.
6.	vi.	BARFIN YATES, b. March 28, 1872, Van Buren County, Tennessee; d. May 3, 1907, Van Buren County, Tennessee.
	vii.	LUTHER CLINTON YATES, b. November 4, 1875; d. August 14, 1942, Van Buren County, Tennessee; m. ISA JOSEPHINE STEAKLEY; b. August 24, 1881; d. August 11, 1934, Van Buren County, Tennessee.

More About LUTHER CLINTON YATES:
Fact 1: Burial in McElroy Cemetery, Bone Cave, Tennessee

More About ISA JOSEPHINE STEAKLEY:
Fact 1: Burial in McElroy Cemetery, Bone Cave, Tennessee

	viii.		MARY E. YATES, b. 1877; d. Unknown.
	ix.		ANNA A. YATES, b. 1879; d. Unknown.

Children of JOHN YATES and ELIZABETH NICHOLS are:

ALFRED² YATES, b. 1821, Tennessee; d. Unknown; m. SARAH RAMSEY, September 24, 1843, White County, Tennessee; d. Unknown.

Notes for ALFRED YATES:
A Alfred Yates listed in 1850 White County Census, District II (there's a 3 year difference in 1860 Alfred Yeates).

282 Farmer ($300)

Alfred Yates 29 m TN
Sarah 23 f VA
Alvin (farmer) 18 m TN
Elizabeth 6 f TN
Alvin E. 4 m TN
William T. 1 m TN

A Alfred Yeates listed in 1860 Van Buren County Census, age is about right.
Verify the following information:

40 Millright
Alfred Yeates 41 m TN
Sarah 30 f VA
Elizabeth J. 16 f TN
Alen J. 13 m TN
William F. 12 m TN
Daniel J. 8 m TN
Lucy A. 5 f TN
Wiatt 3 m TN
James I. 3 wks m TN

	xi.		SARAH YATES, b. 1822, Halifax County, Virginia; d. Unknown; m. JOHN DODSON, December 2, 1845, White County, Tennessee; d. Unknown.
	xii.		NANCY YATES, b. 1826, Tennessee; d. Unknown; m. ISAAC SPURR, July 11, 1847, White County, Tennessee; d. Unknown.
	xiii.		VINY YATES, b. 1827, Tennessee; d. Unknown.
	xiv.		JOHN YATES, b. 1828, Tennessee; d. Unknown; m. SARAH BAKER, March 5, 1851, White County, Tennessee; d. Unknown.

Notes for JOHN YATES:
Questions:

A John Yeats (Yates), Jr. listed in 1860 Van Buren County Census, age is about right. Verify the following information:

35 Farmer
John Yeats, Jr. 30 m TN
Sarah A. (spinstress) 30 f TN
T.M. 7 m TN
W.J. 5 m TN
Jeremiah 4 m TN
John C. 3 m TN
Cintha A. 1 f TN

	xv.	ALVIN YATES, b. 1832, Tennessee; d. Unknown; m. EMALISSA DAVIS; d. Unknown.
	xvi.	ELIZABETH YATES, b. 1833, Tennessee; d. Unknown.
7.	xvii.	LARKIN YATES, b. December 7, 1830; d. December 20, 1916, Van Buren County, Tennessee.
	xviii.	WYATT YATES, b. 1837, Tennessee; d. Unknown.

Children of JOHN YATES and LAVINA COLLINS are:

	xix.	WOODSON² YATES, b. 1812, Tennessee; d. Unknown; m. MAHALA; d. Unknown.
8.	xx.	LEVI YATES, b. June 28, 1813, Tennessee; d. March 13, 1900.
	xxi.	ELI YATES, b. 1814, Tennessee; d. Unknown; m. LOUISA (ELIZA) B. LEWIS, August 9, 1838, White County, Tennessee; d. Unknown.
9.	xxii.	ARWINE YATES, b. September 15, 1815, Tennessee; d. June 9, 1886.

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