Yeatman High School - Yeatman Life Yearbook (St Louis, MO)

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.-sr, YESEE LJE JAMES E. , YEATMAN FRANCIS TXIAURER-111116, 1926 AMES ERVVIN YEATMAN was born in Bedford County, Tennessee, August 27, 1818, of well-to-do par- t ents, who gave him an excellent education. He began life as a young man of fine attainments and superior business capacity. His earliest work was in an iron foundry in Cumberland, Tenn. In 1842 he came to St. Louis and opened a branch for a Nashville iron house. The remainder of his life he spent in St. Louis and during that period of almost sixty years here, he saw its growth from a frontier town of fewer than 20,000 inhabitants to a metro- politan city of nearly 600,000. ' ' is-sell Engaging in business as a commission merchant, he soon became prominent among his fellow citizens, not only for his energy and success as a business man, but for his active public spirit. His refined and gener- ous hospitality, his amiable and unselfish temper and his unvarying courtesy endeared him to all with whom he was brought in contact. He became identified with almost every public movement by which the public was affected and in the organizing and main- taining of nearly every one of its leading institutions. He was-one of the founders and the first president of the St. Louis Mer- cantile Library, organized in 1846, and to his humane spirit, untiring and self-denying efforts were largely due the establishment of some of the most important charities of the city, most notable of which are the Blind Girls' Home and Home for the Friendless for Aged VVomen. He was one of the in- corporators of the Bellefontaine Cemetery Association and was its president until his death. He was a director of VVashington University and a member of the board of trustees of the Henry Shaw bequest. Six The outbreak of the Civil XVar afforded Mr. Y eatman the most conspicuous oppor- tunity for the exercise of his noble and philanthropic qualities. A Southern man by birth, and the most indulgent of masters while slavery existed, he was outspoken in his devotionito the Union. He was one of the five men who organized the VV'estern Sanitary Commission, whose immense serv- ices to the Union cause and the comfort and relief which their labors afforded to thou- sands of sick and wounded Union soldiers are a part of the history of the war. He became president of this commission and during the war l1is devotion was an example of moral strength to the sanitary corps which he supervised. It was characteristic of him to insist upon extending the same care and treatment to the wounded Con- federate soldiers as toward Union men. Mr. Yeatman did not lose interest in the soldiers after the Civil NVarg he now be- came active in the establishment of institu- tions for their benefit. Because of this marked public spirit he was made the per- sonal confidant and advisor of many of the leading men of the country. The business career to which Mr. Yeat- man adapted himself, and his abilities and opportunities in this city might have easily made him one of the leading merchants and one of the richest residents. However, his interest in the city and its people was far too deep to permit him merely to make money. In fact, the income which came to his hands was scarcely there before the occasion for the gift to worthy objects made him poor again. Upon his death on the 7th day of July, 1901, he left no property except his library and a few hundred dollars in the bank.

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