Fred C. Yates: The Man and His Lineage

By James R. Riffe

My initial interest in the Yates lineage and Fred C. Yates specifically,
began at an early age when my mother, Edith Jane (Yates) Riffe,
introduced me to the shoebox. I have always thought of it as a shoebox,
because it is about that size, but it is actually more of an all purpose box.
Mother kept her most prized possessions in it, letters from her father,
Fred C. Yates, and a handful of notebooks and documents that had been
passed down from him.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Jun 1, 2012
• ISBN: 9781477115091

Book preview

Fred C. Yates

The Man and his Lineage

James R. Riffe

Copyright © 2012 by James R. Riffe.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2012909142

ISBN:      Hardcover                               978-1-4771-1508-4

                Softcover                                 978-1-4771-1507-7

                Ebook                                      978-1-4771-1509-1

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Contents

Introduction

Chapter 1 1315-1690S, Old England

Chapter 2 Yates In America

Chapter 3 Generations 5-6

Chapter 4 Generation 7

Chapter 5 Boot And Nancy Jane

Chapter 6 Fred C. Yates

Chapter 7 Stories By Fred C. Yates

Chapter 8 Fred C In World War I

Chapter 9 Meuse Argonne 2012

Chapter 10 Dear Janie

Chapter Fred C. And Frances (Raynes) Yates Descendants

Epilogue

DEDICATION

To Fred C. Yates

Much of what is written here was provided by Fred C. Yates, some as early as the 1940s, but most from the middle 1950s. When he passed away in 1955 it was still a work in progress. Hopefully he would have approved of the final product.

and

To Edith Jane (Yates) Riffe

I also dedicate this book to his youngest daughter, Edith Jane, who encouraged him to write many of the stories and letters that fill some of these chapters and who continues to encourage me.

James Ray Riffe (Grandson and Son-Generation 11)

Thank you to our very special friends, Rob and Mary Soeldner, and to my wife, Becky, who was as involved in this project as I was.

Introduction

The Old Shoebox

My initial interest in the Yates lineage and Fred C. Yates specifically, began at an early age when my mother, Edith Jane (Yates) Riffe, introduced me to the shoebox. I have always thought of it as a shoebox, because it is about that size, but it is actually more of an all purpose box. Mother kept her most prized possessions in it, letters from her father, Fred C. Yates, and a handful of notebooks and documents that had been passed down from him.

In 1953 Fred C resided in a Veterans Admistration hospital where he was treated for tuberculosis. He spent several months in the hospital and ultimately died there on July 22, 1955. When he was first admitted and it was apparent that this was going to be a long stay, Mother searched for ways to keep his mind sharp and to keep him engaged. In 1953 they did not have the many options that we enjoy today, so letter writing was about her only option. Mother encouraged him to write about his life and the Yates lineage. Over the next year and up until the time he died, they carried on a regular correspondence which would ultimately fill the Old Shoebox.

My first recollection of the writings was at an early age when I watched Mother help my sister, Jane Lynn, with a school assignment. She used Papaw’s Sweet Talk story as a basis for her project. Over many years I would periodically return to the letters and reread them. Sweet Talk was and still is my favorite. In my early years I read the stories for pure entertainment. As I grew older and worked on my writing skills, I became fascinated by the quality of Fred C’s writings. His sentence structure and punctuation were flawless, and his writing style was easy to follow and uncluttered. Fred C was proud of the GED he earned at the age of 60, but his formal education ended well before high school which did not exist in Putnam County at the time. He was mostly self taught.

The Shoebox followed the James Riffe family to Minnesota in the 1980s, where one weekend my wife, Becky, and I spent hours at her law office copying the contents, and later sending copies to my Yates relatives. Mother had often said that someday someone should use the writings as a basis for a book. At the time I could not envision actually writing a book, but my goal was to satisfy her wishes. I thought that by distributing the copies perhaps this compromise would satisfy her.

In 2009-2010 I began to research my Riffe roots, culminating in a 90 page book that I presented to my sons for Christmas in 2010. At the conclusion of that project my attention turned back to the shoebox. I wanted to completely satisfy Mother’s wish. Fred C’s writings once again came alive for me! This man grew up on the frontier at a time when we were fighting American Indians and we still had Jim Crow laws. He squirrel hunted with an uncle who had fought in the Civil War. He left home the first time at age 16, became a cowboy in what was still remnants of the wild west, and later fought heroically during WW I in the most devastating battle that Americans have ever fought. He was interested in his lineage and researched it as diligently as his sources and funds would allow at that time.

Fred C traced his lineage back 9 generations to George Yates, who was born in 1640 in Berkshire County, England, and settled in the late 1600s in what is today the state of Maryland. The tools that are available today for the amateur genealogist are much more substantial than they were in Fred C’s time. Starting with Fred C’s work and taking that to the internet, I was able to trace our lineage back another 10 generations to John Attayate, born around 1315 in Berkshire County, England.

Mother always believed that at some point the Yates family was wealthy and came from a well placed pedigree. Mother was not wrong. There was considerable wealth at one point in our native England and later in Arundell County, Maryland, where the early Yates of Fred C’s lineage settled. All of the land and wealth are long gone, but what is not gone, is the history of how it was obtained and where it went. The true story is much better than the legend that has survived up until this point.

When I started the Yates Project, which is the name of the file folder I used to corral my research and writings, I decided that the name of this book would be Dear Janie after the salutation used by Fred C on each letter written to his youngest daughter. Then Uncle Ray provided a much needed history of Fred C’s service in WW I. Subsequent research into our old England heritage soon dictated that this would be more than just a shoe box exercise.

About This Book

Fred C. Yates: The Man and his Lineage was written for the benefit of the Yates family descending from Fred C. Yates, not for publication purposes. For that reason I have dispensed with accepted documentation practices in the interest of completing it and getting it in the hands of people to read. Most of Chapter 1 comes from the internet, primarily Ancestry.com sites, except for a few other references that I studied to help me understand the particular eras I was writing about. Readers might appreciate a short history lesson on what was going on at the time of different Yates generations. I often ask the question, why did an ancestor move? History helps us to understand why they might have ventured out to new worlds. Getting information through the rootsweb/ancestry.com source is not what I call official source research. While ancestry.com provides official documents, the rootsweb section that I also use sometimes provides commentary by both amateur and professional genealogists. I have done the best that I can to sort out various conflicting views and although I am sure there are errors in what I have written, I believe what follows is directionally correct, and certainly is accurate with respect to our direct line of forefathers.

If a future Yates descendant from the Fred C. Yates line wants to take this project to the next level, this book is a good starting point. It will orient and direct you to where you need to start. If you are a historian or serious genealogist, you will find it lacking in official, documented research. This work was not targeted to satisfy this form of appraisement. It was researched and written to enable a family to understand its roots, to get to know some of its ancestors, and to be able to appreciate not only the role that our family has played in history, but to appreciate the strength of character it has taken for some of these ancestors to survive. For the serious historian, the references are there, and I would invite you to the use of my own collection that I obtained from Edith Jane, Uncle Ray, and Pat. Sorry to disappoint the historian. I hope the rest of you get something useful out of this and enjoy the read.

In 1588 Francis Yate gave up what freedom he had because of his commitment to his religion. All Francis had to do was to refute his religion, adopt a religion that he did not believe in, and he would likely have lived many more years. Had he done that, perhaps our family today would still be in England, enjoying some of the wealth that the family had earned to that point. In 1919 in France, if Fred C. Yates had allowed himself to be taken to the rear and placed in a field hospital, he might have lived longer and enjoyed more prosperity. We might be better off as a family today. But would our world be better off without principled people who put beliefs and others ahead of their own well being. What would you do if you were put in the position of Francis, of Fred C, of other Yates ancestors not mentioned here?

Much of the focus in this text is on the men who carry the Yate/Yates surname. In the early generations we have little information on the women except for their personal lineage which we note. Until we get into American Generations 8-9 where we have the benefit of Fred C’s firsthand knowledge, there just aren’t many records that tell us about the women. One of my favorite sections of Fred C’s writings is where he discusses the relationship between his parents and the roles that each played in their marriage. Some readers will be disappointed that Fred doesn’t shed more light on the relationship he had with his wife, Frances. In one letter where Edith Jane encouraged him to write more about himself, he responded that he will leave that up to future generations. I can identify with that position.

CHAPTER 1

1315-1690s, Old England

(Unless otherwise noted, all references from this chapter are from Rootsweb Ancestry.com)

There were 11 generations of Fred C. Yates’ direct lineage that we know of from Berkshire County, England. This county is 50 miles southeast of London and is split by the Thames River, which also runs through the city of London. In medieval times the English royalty would build castles within a one day journey by coach from each other, roughly 20 miles, to accommodate their travel needs when they ventured out into the countryside. The town of Windsor and Windsor Castle, was one of these stopovers used by royalty. In 2006 when Becky and I lived in London, we visited Windsor one Saturday morning and spent the better part of that day touring the town and the castle. The castle sits on a hill overlooking the Thames which was a common route for invaders to launch attacks against London. The bus let us off into the downtown area and after finding a suitable pub where we would lunch on the traditional fish and chips, we climbed the cobblestone road up the hill to the castle. At the time I had no idea that my ancestors likely made this same climb.

At the demise of Roman rule in the 5th century AD, Germanic tribes from continental Europe migrated to what is now known as Great Britain. The Anglo Saxons were the predominant people there until the Norman Conquest in 1066(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglo-Saxon_invasion _of_Britain). The story of this conquest is best told by the Bayeux Tapestry located in Bayeux, France where we visited in 2006 and again in 2012. Much of the language and culture of the Anglo Saxons remains even today but as you might imagine the Anglo Saxons and Normans intermarried and their individual cultures blended. Today the people there are just British. This is the melting pot from which our Yates ancestry originated.

GENERATION 1

William Attayate(1) (est 1315-?) Married:?

Complete records are not available for William Attayate, but it is estimated that he was born in 1315. We do not know when he died or who he married, but he was probably married around 1335. The movie Braveheart was based around this time. King Edward I, better known as Longshanks died in 1307, and turned over the monarchy to his son Edward II. William Wallace, the Scotland hero who was featured in the movie, was put to death in London in 1305. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_I_England)

There are various deviations of the name Yates, Yate, Yeats, Yeates, Yetts, etc. Many surnames came from the occupation of the person so identified, and the old English geat, meant gate, which became Yate in Middle English. During the time period of William Attayate, many English roads were privately owned and peasants were used to collect tolls. William might have earned a living this way or he (or his ancestor) might have been the gatekeeper of a castle or manor. If he worked at the castle or manor he likely would have had a higher standing in that society as opposed to the public road gatekeeper. If early Attayates weren’t in fact gatekeepers, the prefix atta might signify their dwelling place, atta or near a gate. I think it is likely that this William was not a peasant, and not just a keeper of a gate on a toll road, because his son, John, was a land owner. Land ownership was more of an upper class distinction during these times.

One researcher speculates that William was gatekeeper at a castle or manor and believes that he attained a position of importance in one of the Norman castles. Unable to find a link of Attayate to French nobility, however, he speculates that William might have married a daughter from the castle. There is no support for this in the research, and his conclusions are driven somewhat by the fact that one of William’s descendants married Mary Tattershall who might have descended from French/Norman noble families. I have not verified this, but it is unlikely that Mary would have married a peasant. I will leave further research on Mary Tattershall to a future project or to a future Yates historian.

Children:

John Attayate(2) EST:1340-

GENERATION 2

John Attayate(2) (1340-?) Married: ? in (EST) 1370 in Curcourt, South Denchworth, Berkshire County

John owned property in Berkshire Co., with a house and land, Circourt Manor. He was associated with the Hydes and Fettiplaces of Ufton Court. The Hydes and Fettiplaces eventually owned Circourt Manor which was sold in 1617. We will see this Hyde connection again, in Generation 6. Hyde is a prominent name in England. Becky and I spent many Sunday mornings in 2006 in Hyde Park (London), listening to people standing on boxes on Speaker’s Corner, speaking on an assortment of topics.

Children:

William Yate(3) 1375—?

GENERATION 3

William Yate(3) (1375-?) Married: ? in (EST) 1395 in Charney, Berkshire Co.

William’s given name was Wilmus, and there was a Wilmus Yate of Charney Bassett (Manorial Lord of Standlake, Oxen 1380), which would fit our William. He also had a son named Edmund which also fits. In 1974 there was a redistricting of some towns, so towns that would have been in Berkshire County during these earlier periods might today show up in Oxfordshire.

Children:

Edmund Yate(4) EST 1400-?

GENERATION 4

Edmund Yate(4) (EST 1400-?) Married: Margaret Cornwall (EST1400-?) In EST 1434, in Charney, Berkshire County. (There is a town of Cornwall in England.)

Children:

Richard Yate(5) EST 1435-?

GENERATION 5

Richard Yate (5) (EST 1435-?) Married: Joan Ashenden (EST 1435-?), in Charney, Berkshire County in the 1460 timeframe.

Richard was Lord of Standlake, Charney, and Longworth Manors in Berkshire Co. A lord in Old English law had land with vassals but was himself a vassal to a higher Lord. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lord_of_the_Manor) Richard is the 5th generation of Yates/Attayate that we know of, and the 4th generation to own land.

Children:

1. Edmund Yate ABT 1462

2. Lord John Yate(6) EST 1465

3. Margaret

4. Maude