The Yeoman Family

L. R. Yeaman

Lawyer. Louisville Trust Co. Building, Louisville, Kentucky. And Assistant to the City Attorney, Room 35, City Hall.

Lewis Rogers Yeaman was born at Louisville, Ky., Dec. 17th, 1872. He is the son of Harvey Yeaman and Nannie Rogers, who were married in October, 1871, at Louisville, and had one other child, a daughter, who died before maturity.

Harvey Yeaman (b. Sept. 23d, 1833, at Brandenburg, Ky. ; d. Aug. nth, 1876, at Trinidad, Colo.) was a lawyer, and resided at various periods during his life in Elizabethtown, Owensboro, and Louisville, Ky. He was the son of Stephen Minor Yeaman, a lawyer, and Lucretia Helm, (sister of John L. Helm, twice Governor of Kentucky), both of Elizabethtown. His brother, George H. Yeaman, a New York City lawyer and ex-Congressman from Kentucky, was at one time United States Minister to Denmark. The family came from Scotland about the year 1745, and settled on Long Island.

Nannie (Rogers) Yeaman (b, Sept. ist, 1850, at Louisville, Ky. ; d. Sept. 20th, 1884, at Louisville) was the daughter of Lewis Rogers, a physician, and Mary E. Thurston, both of Louisville. She was of English and French descent.

Yeaman prepared for College at Andover. He was a member of the Andover Club and the Southern Club at Yale, and received a First Colloquy at Commencement. Psi U.

He was married at Denver, Colo., March 25th, 1899, to Miss Mary Josephine Gregg, daughter of the late Isaac and Josephine Gregg, all of Philadelphia, Pa.

In the fall of 1896 Yeaman went to Denver, and there commenced the study of law in the office of Yeaman & Gove—his uncle, Caldwell Yeaman, being the senior member of that firm. In 1897 he was admitted to the Colorado Bar, successfully defended his first case, and then entered the Boston University Law School, from which he was graduated in 1898 with the degree of LL.B., having completed the regular three years' course in one. He went abroad that summer to recuperate.

The two years 1898-1900 were spent in Denver, associated with Yeaman & Gove. In 1900, however, he began to long for the "fields of blue grass, the peculiar hospitality and the peerless whisky of Kentucky. Accordingly in June, 1900, I determined to return to Louisville, and in the fall of that year became associated with Col. St. John Boyle."

"In my 1902 installment," he wrote this spring, "I stated that I was associated with Col. St. John Boyle in the practice of law. Shortly after that letter was written the firm of Boyle & Yeaman was formed, and that firm continued until January, 1906, when the partnership was dissolved by the death of Col. Boyle. I have continued to practise alone in the same offices. In March, 1905, I accepted a position as the assistant to the City Attorney. In Louisville the City Attorney is concerned only with civil business. I believe the corresponding officer in New York is called Corporation Counsel. This position I have since held in addition to my private practice, and the experience has been and will be of value."

Yeaman has made several futile efforts to attend another New York dinner, but something always prevents him. "It will be impossible," he wrote, in January, 1905; "on the thirty-first of this month the trial of an important case, in which I am concerned, comes off in the circuit court; and on the second of February I have a case set for argument in the Court of Appeals. These engagements have completely wrecked my plans and annihilated my hopes for a share in the good time which a '96 dinner means. Graduates who live at this distance have few tastes of that sort of thing; and I am particularly disappointed this time because I had my mouth all fixed for it."