The Origin of the Yoes name
By Gene Yoes III
When answering the question of the nationality of the name "Yoes," the easiest answer is to say that the name is American. We really have been unable to definitively tie the Yoes name to any particular country. In early America, there are isolated "Yoes" references, or speculations that certain names, such a "Joh," became Yoes. But there is no concrete evidence linking those early Yoeses to the Yoes families that can be traced to individuals in South Carolina in 1800. These early Yoes names and speculative name variations have been attributed to Germany and Holland. A German scholar (of sorts) feels that the name Yoes was probably not a German name, but that is only one man's opinion.
Henry E. Yoes, Sr., born 1895, said his ancestors told him that the name was French, with the Yoeses having left Brest, France. But Brest is a port, and many nationalities would have disembarked from that port. Apart from that particular claim, no one else has ever suggested that the name is French.
Ernest C. Yoes of California, another Yoes researcher, says his relatives told him that their family legend was this: in the mid-1800s, four brothers named Yoe came to New York from Ireland. While working there, coworkers called them the Yoe's brothers, and some of them changed the spelling of their name to Yoes. However, after spending a great deal of time tracing the Yoes family, Ernest believes the name is German, based on some of the first names of the Arkansas Yoes clan.
Halberts periodically sends letters to members of the family, claiming that they have a copy of the Yoes Coat of Arms. The Coat of Arms provided is actually for the family Yoe. Halberts suggests, without any authority, that the most prominent variations of Yoe are Yoes, Yohes and Yeu. Halberts concludes "the surname Yoes appears to be locational in origin, and is believed to be associated with the English and Welsh, meaning, 'dweller by one of the Rivers Yeo.' " Halberts also indicates that in 1971, based on census records, there were 100 heads of households in the United States with the name Yoes.
The Baton Rouge Morning Advocate once tackled the name of Yoe in its genealogical column. The writer indicated that in England, Yoe is a variance spelling of place names Yea and Yeo. There are several such places in England, all located beside an old English "stream."
Ernest Yoes further writes, "The origin of the name Yoes and its original nationality is still a mystery. I have no indication that the name Yoes (spelled that way) originated in any other country, and yet I don't know how, where, or when it originated here. There are a number of names, both in this country and abroad, that have similar spellings or sounds (or both.) It could be easy to believe a relationship exists between the name YOES and any of them -- trying to prove a connection or even give reasonable circumstantial evidence of a connection is another matter. A few similar names in present or past records are: Yoest, Yoesting, Yoel, Yoels, Youse, Yost, Yoas, Yoe, Ioh, Joh, Ioor, Joor, Ives, Yows, etc."
"Scribes who recorded names in various records of the past were notoriously bad at spelling. They often, through necessity or otherwise, spelled the names according to how the names sounded, and a name can sound different to different persons. A perfect example is the recordings of the Yoes families in the Arkansas Census reports -- the 1830 Census of Washington County, Arkansas, listed Jacob Yaws and Coon Rod Yaws. The 1840 Census listed them as Jacob Yews and Conrad Yews. The 1850 census listed them, and other grown children, as Ewes (not Yoes)! The 1880 census finally had them listed as Yoes. There is no reason to believe the name was ever actually changed - just recorded wrong most of the time. Such misspellings greatly compound the efforts to trace the family ancestry through records in the early 1800s and before. It is possible, or even probable, that such misspelling was responsible for originating the name Yoes."
My own research shows that the earliest Yoeses that we can concretely trace as the progenitor of any Yoes families are Nathan Carroll Yoes, Sr., and John Yoes. They arrived in Spartanburg, South Carolina before 1800, and both are listed in the 1800 census. The Arkansas clan didn't arrive in Arkansas until several decades later.
Spartanburg was organized in 1785, just fifteen years before that census. In South Carolina courthouse records, Yoes individuals were listed as both Yews and Yaes. The two moved to Robertson County, Tennessee, and the legal records there list other spellings of the surname: Yose, Youes.
Where the two came from is unknown, but there is some circumstantial evidence to indicate that they were from North Carolina. The circumstantial evidence indicates, though, that the name was originally Yoe or Yews. This conclusion rests on two different and divergent searches made by different individuals.
First, I researched the history of Spartanburg. In A History of Spartanburg, author J. B. O. Landrum indicates that Spartanburg's early settlers were primarily from Anson, North Carolina, and Virginia, and were of English origin. When I checked the censuses from Anson County, I found a Yoe, but no Yoeses. And interestingly, there was a Nathan Yoe and a William Yoe. Nathan Yoe was living alone and was over 16 years of age; William Yoe, lived with one male over 16 years of age, one male under 16 years, and three females. Nathan was an uncommon first name in the North Carolina census.
We know that Nathan and John married the Connell sisters, left Spartanburg shortly after the census, and moved to Robertson County, Tennessee. Is it a coincidence that they moved to an area where a Revolutionary War land warrant (land given for War service) was redeemed by a James Yoes? And was it also coincidence that the warrant was issued by North Carolina in 1796? Or that the land warrant was redeemed for 224 acres in Robertson County on March 26, 1801 -- just before John and Nathan show up in the same county?
I hired a genealogist to research James Yoes, in an effort to see if James could be tied to Nathan and John. The genealogist could not find evidence of a James Yoes listed as a Revolutionary War soldier in North Carolina (except for the warrant itself,) but there was a James Yew -- and he was from the Anson, North Carolina area!
How the three were related, if at all, has not been determined, but what are the odds of three individuals with the same unusual last name showing up in Tennessee in the same county, via different routes, within two or three years of one another? It is improbable that this was mere coincidence.
Nathan's children, unlike the Arkansas Yoeses, did not have German first names. Nathan's children were: Giles, Elizabeth, Sally, Lettis, Polly, William, Susan, Lovinea, Nancy, and Nathan, Jr.
Therefore, my conclusion is that the name Yoes is an aberration of the name Yoe or Yews, both of which I believe to be English. But I am still open to the possibility that families of different lines, from different ancestral countries, could have independently ended up with the name Yoes. In other words, there may be different, unrelated ancestors that independently aquired the Yoes name.