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YATES HOUSE HISTORY

On July 29, 1994, the old Yates House began a two-day trip from its original site at
1318 Andrews Street to Sam Houston Park. Just over six months later, on February
18, 1995, the house was dedicated in a ceremony celebrating the life and works of
the man who built it over a century before – the Reverend John Henry Yates.

John Henry Yates, the second child of Robert and Rachel Yates, was born July 11,
1828 in Gloucester County, Virginia, near Ware Neck on Mobjack Bay, an arm of the
Chesapeake. There were three boys and three girls in this small slave family owned
by George Fields. John Henry, usually called Jack, had a brother, George, who later
served in the Union Army, and an older sister, Hannah.

Jack married Harriett Willis, who lived on a neighboring plantation. In 1863-1864,

Harriett’s master moved his slaves to Matagorda County, Texas, and as was the
practice at that time, the women and children were kept together. At that time there
were six Yates children. The Emancipation Proclamation of January 1, 1863,
granted freedom to all the slaves, and in those areas of the South occupied by
Federal troops, it was not uncommon for slaves to walk away from the plantations
and place themselves under the protection of any Union forces in the vicinity. Since
no Federal troops then occupied Texas, slavery continued to be enforced there for
two more years.

George Fields and his son, George, Jr., appeared to be compassionate slave
owners and never allowed their slave families to be separated by sale, so when
Harriett and the children were sent to Texas, George Fields, Jr., told Jack to take his
wagon and go to Texas to find his family. Jack Yates located them on a plantation in
Matagorda County, where they remained until the war officially ended. General Lee
surrendered at Appomattox Court House April 9, 1865, but it was not until June 19,
1865, that Major General Gordon Granger landed at Galveston and proclaimed all
slaves in Texas free. It is that date, “Juneteenth,” that is commonly celebrated by
the African-American community in Texas.

About six months later, Jack Yates gathered up his family, loaded them in his wagon,
and brought them all to Houston, originally intending to return to Virginia. However,
he found the white people of Houston friendly and willing to give work to ex-slaves.
For a time he worked as a drayman, while his family found a home in the 600 block
of Louisiana among numerous other displaced ex-slaves who clustered along Buffalo
Bayou. The Yates family later located better quarters in the Third Ward, and the
overcrowded black population began to move west along the bayou into the then
relatively unsettled portions of the Fourth Ward, later known as Freedmantown or
(now) Freedmen’s Town.

In addition to his work as a drayman, Jack Yates also became a Baptist minister. It
was fortunate that he had learned to read and write as a young child. George Fields,
the plantation owner upon whose land Jack Yates was born, appears not to have
been the stereotypical slave master popularized by abolitionist literature. He
believed in keeping families intact and he allowed Jack to spend his spare time
fishing on Chesapeake Bay to earn money that he could spend or save at will. Most
important of all, he indirectly provided Jack with a good, simple education. Fields
had lost his wife shortly after the birth of his son, George Fields, Jr. The father
brought Rachel and Jack into the family home to care for the motherless child. Thus,
George and Jack, who were close in age, became playmates and friends. When
little George began to learn reading, writing, and arithmetic, he passed on to Jack
everything he had learned. As he grew older, Jack began to read the Bible, and at
times held prayer meetings at other plantations in the vicinity.

Antioch Baptist Church was organized in Houston in 1866. Two black missionaries,
Isaac S. Campbell and J. J. Ryanhart, had been sent to Texas by the American
Baptist Home Mission Society to propagate religion among the recently freed
slaves. They soon recognized the leadership qualities of Jack Yates and ordained
him as Antioch’s first regular minister. At times services were held after hours in
white church buildings; other times they were held in a “brush arbor” thrown up on
the banks of Buffalo Bayou. The first frame church building was located at Rusk and
Bagby on what was known as “Baptist Hill,” the high bank of a large, muddy gully at
the foot of Rusk Avenue. Yates saw the need for a better location, and under his
guidance the deacons and members purchased two lots in the Seneschal Addition
from Edward Cravey on January 13, 1874. The church is located at the same spot
today.

Jack Yates firmly believed in land ownership, and particularly home ownership, and
he encouraged his congregation to purchase property. In 1869 he bought four lots in
block 22 of the Castanie Addition on what became known as Andrews Street. He
later bought other land in the same tract for a garden; some acreage near the
Houston Academy, a school for African-Americans in which he was interested; a lot
in the Third Ward; and land in Montgomery County. Yates was also instrumental in
securing Emancipation Park for the black population of Houston.

The Castanie tract is essentially the same property as the old Robert Campbell
homestead of 50 acres, less a portion set aside as a graveyard. It is part of the
Obedience Smith survey and was actually occupied as a residence from the earliest
days of Houston, even before Obedience Smith had title to the underlying land. The
northern boundary of the Obedience Smith survey and the southern boundary of the
John Austin Survey on which Houston was originally built, is West Dallas. However,
West Dallas was not the original name. An important trail led west out of Houston,
following roughly the line of timber along the southern banks of Buffalo Bayou,
crossing the bayou near its headwaters in the vicinity of present-day Addicks, and
proceeding on to San Felipe de Austin on the Brazos River. Along the San Felipe
Trail near Houston, a number of early inhabitants were located. J. W. N. A. Smith,
son of Obedience, and his family lived in what would now be part of River Oaks.
Lardner Stanley, plantation owner, merchant, gambler and husband of N. K. Kellum’s
niece and ward, Melissa Evans, had a mint farm (for juleps) and a rack track (for the
Houston Jockey Club) on the south side of the trail. John Woodruff, future father-in-
law of Anson Jones, furnished hospitality and drinking water from his spring to
travelers along the way. Sam Houston had a 30-acre ranch or farm in the vicinity,
and nearer town were the stockyards and slaughter pens which supplied Hopson &
Cain’s tallow factory. Shortly before Yates bought his homestead property, San
Felipe Cottage, now in Sam Houston Park, was built at what would become 313
West Dallas. For a number of years funeral processions moved along this road to
the old burial ground, christened Founders’ Memorial Park in 1936.

By 1866 this area of the Fourth Ward had not developed a great deal, and with the
influx of the black population, the relatively inexpensive property became an
attractive site for developers to subdivide into small lots which were sold to ex-slaves
at reasonable prices. This became a part of Freedmen’s Town whose boundaries
have been fluid over the years, extending along both sides of San Felipe (West
Dallas) until a city hospital, a potter’s field, and later Allen Parkway Village (originally
San Felipe Courts) reduced its north-south boundaries to West Dallas and West
Gray. Still later, the Pierce elevated section of the Gulf Freeway severed Antioch
Church and the commercial centers from the rest of the area, which then extended
west to Taft. Now the Freedmen’s Town historic area extends from Arthur to
Genessee. At one time the original Freedmen’s Town portion of the Fourth Ward
was widely known as the Harlem of Houston, filled with restaurants, night clubs, jazz
music, businesses, homes, and churches. Both Antioch Church and the Yates home
became landmarks. In the days of mule-drawn streetcars, later electrified, the San
Felipe line curved around the Yates homestead, and visitors were directed to ask the
conductor to let them off at the Jack Yates place when they wanted to stop in the
Fourth Ward.

During the decade following the purchase of the Andrews Street property in 1869,
Jack Yates, with the help of his brother, George, and his brother-in-law, Cue Willis,
built the two-story frame Greek Revival style house (c. 1870). During the two-year
restoration of the house in the 1990s, several different wood trims were found,
indicating that the house was built over a fairly long period of time, probably as time
and money permitted. It was built with balloon frame style of construction and with
pressboards. According to a Yates biography published in 1985 by his sons,
Rutherford and Paul Yates, this was the first two-story home built by an African-
American in Houston. Jack Yates’ granddaughter, Martha Countee Whiting, who
lived in the house during much of her life, was instrumental in giving the house to
The Heritage Society. Subsequently, Mrs. Whiting has given The Heritage Society a
wealth of valuable information, including photographs that pertain to the house and
family; renovations made to the house; residents who lived there; furnishings as she
remembered them; special events celebrated there by the family; and even the
flowers and vegetables in the garden. Above all, Mrs. Whiting chronicled the daily
lives of a remarkable family whose values of religious faith, personal responsibility,
hard work, thrift, and education enabled its members to rise from slavery to civic
esteem – the family values that have long been considered responsible for the
realization of the American Dream.

It is believed that Jake Yates had eleven surviving children at the time of his death –
ten by his first wife, Harriett, who died March 10, 1887, and one by a later marriage
to Annie Freeman (they were married October 31, 1888). The known children were
Martha Yates Jones, Willis Yates, John Henry Yates, Jr., Sallie Yates Pettie-
Amboree, Maria Yates Sharkie, Lula Yates Kemp, Mary Yates Deman, Rutherford B.
H. Yates, Pinkie V. Yates, Nannie Yates Countee, and Paul L. Yates. The last four
children were born in the Yates house on Andrews.

Jack Yates was particularly interested in education, and his younger children, at
least, were given the advantages of college training. Sallie was among the first
women from this part of the state to enter Bishop College in Marshall, Texas;
Rutherford also attended Bishop College; Pinkie and Nannie graduated from
Spelman Seminary in Atlanta, Georgia; and Nannie also attended Bishop. Pinkie
taught school all her life, in Washington, D. C., as well as in Houston and other areas
of Texas. Nannie taught for a time and later served as housemother at Prairie View
A & M and the Houston Negro College of Nursing. Rutherford and his brother, Paul,
operated a successful printing business in Houston. Jack Yates dreamed of
establishing a Houston institution of higher learning for African-Americans. With the
help of Jennie L. Peck and Florence Dysart, white women missionaries from
Chicago, the Houston Academy was organized, and two frame buildings were
erected on what would later be the 3200 block of West Dallas. One of the buildings
was named Yates Hall. The Houston Academy opened in 1894. Although the
school continued to operate for some time, it was partially destroyed by fire in 1925.
Jake Yates would have been happy to know, however, that a Houston high school
was named in his honor in 1928 and is still in service today.

After Yates’s remarriage in 1888, he resigned as pastor of Antioch and founded

Bethel Baptist Church in about 1890. His two sons, in their biography of their father,
ascribe the departure from Antioch to a disagreement with the congregation over the
expenditure of borrowed money to remodel or repair the church building. Yates was
a firm believer in pay-as-you-go economics, and opposed doing anything on credit.
His death came on December 22, 1897.

Following protracted legal action and possible unintentional mishandling of probate

matters, much of Jack Yates’s estate was dissipated. Annie and her son, Paul,
remained in the homestead. Pinkie Yates, who seemed to be the most strong-
minded and determined of the children, organized the family in a concerted effort to
regain some of the property. She had married Benjamin F. Henderson and later
Robert Bridgeman, but did not adopt either name permanently. There were no
children of either union. Beginning about 1902, Pinkie began to reclaim some of the
property. Between legal action, persuasion, and cash payment she succeeded in
obtaining title to lots 7 and 8 of the Castanie Addition. On December 19, 1907,
Annie Yates finally signed a quitclaim deed to what had been the community
property and homestead of Harriett and John Henry Yates at 1318 Andrews.
Rutherford Yates, who had apparently helped Pinkie and Nannie in securing some of
the outstanding land titles, received lot 8 immediately east of the Jack Yates home.
Here he and his family built a home that is still standing at 1314 Andrews.

Pinkie moved into the seven-room house in about 1915. In 1920 and again in 1943,
she made substantial repairs to the old home where she lived throughout the rest of
her life. Although she had no children, she brought Martha Countee, her sister
Nannie’s daughter, to live with her from the age of six or seven years. At times, a
spare bedroom was rented to schoolteachers or provided to family members who
lived there temporarily. Martha remained with her aunt even after her marriage to
Samuel Whiting. After Pinkie’s death, July 3, 1962, the Andrews Street residence
became rental property.

Martha Whiting has given us more than a landmark house – she has given us the
description of a home “where when any of us was down on his luck we [could] come
back home and be taken in by other family members.” This message reiterates the
importance of family in the life of Jack Yates.