Page:Appletons' Cyclopædia of American Biography (1889, volume 6).djvu/676

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YEARDLEY
YELL

don under the name of Carolina. The report being favorable, the planters purchased of the Indians a tract of land thirty-two miles square on Cape Fear river, and begged of the proprietaries a confirmation of the purchase and a separate char- ter of government. Not all their request was granted, but Sir John was appointed their gov- ernor, with a jurisdiction that extended from Cape Fear to San Mateo. The country was called '• Clarendon." In the autumn of 1665 he arrived from Barbadoes with a band of emigrants and founded a town on the south bank of Cape Fear river that proved so utter a failure that even its site is now in dispute. Yet the settlement flour- ished for a time, and exported boards, staves, and shingles to the parent colony. The traffic proved profitable, emigration increased, and in 1666 the plantation is said to have contained 800 souls. Yeamans seems to have managed affairs satisfac- torily, but after a time he returned to the West Indies. In 1670 three ship-loads of emigrants that had arrived from England sailed up Ashley river and began a town on " the first high land conven- ient for tillage and pasturing." In the copy of the original fundamental constitutions given them be- fore leaving London, John Lock, Sir John Yea- mans, and James Carteret were created landgraves. The following year the colony was increased by Dutch emigrants from New York and others from Holland, and by the arrival of Sir John from Bar- badoes with African slaves, the first that were landed on this continent. The governor soon sunk under the climate and the hardships to which all the settlers were exposed, and Sir John Yeamans was appointed his successor. He proved, however, to be " a sordid calculator," bent only on acquiring a fortune. He encouraged expense, and enriched himself, but without gaining either respect or hatred. The proprietaries complained that " it must be a bad soil " if industrious men could not get a living out of it. and protested that they did not propose to maintain the idle. In 1674 Yea- mans was removed from office, and at once sailed for Barbadoes, where he soon afterward died.


YEARDLEY, Sir George, governor of Virginia, b. in England about 1580 ; d. there in November, 1627. He was among the early emigrants to Vir- ginia, and on the return of Sir Thomas Dale to England in 1616, was appointed deputy governor by that official. The appointment did not please the friends of Sir Thomas Smythe, the chairman of the London company, and they succeeded in electing in his stead Samuel Argall, who had made several voyages to Virginia as Smythe's trading agent. Argall arrived in the colony in 1617, and proving himself from the first "arrogant, self- willed, and greedy of gain," he was displaced after the death of Lord Delaware, and the " mild and popular " Yeardley was re-elected governor. On 22 Nov. the king gave Yeardley audience, knighted him, and held a long conversation with him on the religion of the natives. On 19 April, 1619, Sir George entered on his office. From the moment of his arrival dates the real life of Virginia. Commissions and instructions from the company " for the better establishinge of a commonwealth ' were brought over by him, in accordance with which he made proclamation that the cruel laws by which the planters had so long been governed were now abrogated. It was also " graunted that a generall assemblie shoulde be helde yearly once." Yeardley remained in office until 1621, but, not proving* as energetic as the company in London desired that he should be, he was superseded by Sir Francis Wyatt, who was the bearer of a written constitution for the colony. A year after the ac- cession of Charles I. Wyatt retired, and Yeardley was again made governor, his appointment being considered a guarantee that representative govern- ment would be maintained as it had been intro- duced by him. From this time Virginia rose rapidly in public esteem ; in 1627, 1,000 emigrants arrived, and there was an increasing demand for the products of the soil. In November of that year Yeardley's career was closed by death. Pos- terity retains a grateful recollection of the man who first convened a representative assembly in the western hemisphere, while the colonists, in a letter to the privy council, pronounced a glowing eulogy on his character.


YEATES, Jasper, merchant, b. in Yorkshire, England ; d. near New Castle, Del., in 1720. He emigrated to the West Indies, and afterward re- moved to Chester, Pa., w T here he built and resided in a venerable mansion that is still standing, and was afterward Mrs. Deborah Logan's. He also erected extensive granaries on the creek. In 1701 he was constituted by William Penn one of the four burgesses of Chester, and in 1703 was elected chief burgess. In 1694 he was appointed justice of the court for Chester cpunty, and from 1704 till 1710 and from 1717 till his death he was associate- justice of the supreme courts of the province of Pennsylvania and the lower counties on the Dela- ware. In 1696 he was admitted to a seat in the provincial council of Pennsylvania. In 1700 he was elected a representative of New Castle county in the general assembly of the province, and, after the separation of the lower counties on the Dela- ware, was chosen a representative and speaker of their assembly. — His grandson, Jasper, jurist, b. in Philadelphia, Pa., 9 April, 1745 ; d. in Lancaster, Pa., 14 March, 1817, was graduated at the College of Philadelphia in 1761, studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1765, and in 1774 was chosen a mem- ber of the Lancaster county committee of corre- spondence, of which he became chairman in 1776. Fourteen years afterward he sat in the convention that ratified the constitution of the United States. From 1791 until his death he was an associate justice of the supreme court of Pennsylvania. In 1794 President Washington appointed him a com- missioner to confer with the inhabitants of the western counties of Pennsylvania, for the settle- ment of the whisky insurrection. Judge Yeates preserved notes of judicial proceedings in which he took part, and prepared them for the press. They were issued, after his death, as " Reports of Cases Adjudged in the Supreme Court of Pennsyl- vania, with some Select Cases at Nisi Prius. and in the Circuit Courts, from 1791 till 1808 " (4 vols., Philadelphia, 1817-'19).— His daughter, Catha- rine, benefactor, b. in Lancaster, Pa., in 1783; d. there, 7 June, 1866, devoted a legacy of $26,000 to founding the Yeates institute for the education of voting men for the ministry of the Protestant Episcopal church, and also contributed to its maintenance the sum of $800 yearly.


YELL, Archibald, lawyer, b. in Kentucky in 1797; d. in Buena Vista, Mexico, 23 Feb., 1847. He studied law, was admitted to the bar, removed to the territory of Arkansas, settled at Fayetteville, and was appointed one of the U.S. territorial judges. He was elected to the 24th congress, re- elected to the 25th, and served from 5 Dec, 1836, till 3 March, 1839. He was subsequently chosen governor of Arkansas, and held the office from 1840 till 1844. The following year he was again elected to congress, and he served from 1 Dec., 1845, till 1 July, 1846, when he resigned to join