There is no direct documentation indicating that William Yates is Darcus Yates’s father, but I find the accumulation of the circumstantial evidence persuasive. I come to this conclusion by process of elimination, by linkages between him and her husband and family, and by geographical and religious proximities.

There were not a lot of Yates around that area at the time of Dorcas’s marriage. Joshua and William Yates were enumerated on the Fayette County tax lists on the same day in the same militia district in 1789,2113 indicating they were neighbors. In 1793, Joshua, Joshua, Benjamin and William Yates were listed together.2114 William had nine cattle, two horses. In 1794, the year Dorcas was married, the Clark County tax lists again showed Joshua, William and Benjamin Yates enumerated together.2115 John, Matthias and James Lambert are shown five pages earlier in the listings. In 1795, Joshua, Joshua and William Yates are shown together,2116 with Lamberts now including Garrett in the same militia district. The grouping of Joshua, Joshua, William and Benjamin matches reports that Joshua had sons including Joshua, Benjamin, and William.2117,2118 The elder Joshua is an unlikely candidate to be father of Dorcas because his children are generally known and his birth on the early side. The younger Joshua and Benjamin have other known spouses. This leaves us William.

In 1810, census records show Joshua, William and John Yates in Madison County,2108 and Matthias, George, William and James Lambert as well.2119

Land records show two direct ties of William Yates to Garrett Lambert and family. In 1825, William was a bondsman for Garrett in a mortgage for a business transaction by the latter.2120,2121 In 1830, William granted land to Hiram Lambert, Garrett’s son.2107 The land is noted to abut land of Garrett Lambert, and is described as “being the same whereon the said Hiram Lambert now lives.” This is a picture of a family grouping with three generations living together.

Finally, there are associations within the Baptist church community at a time when the membership of the churches was in the dozens. Joshua Yates (the elder) came from Loudoun County, Virginia to Strode’s (Stroud’s) Station in current Maysville, Kentucky about 1786.918 The previous year, the Elkhorn Association of the Baptist Church had been founded, along with Limestone Church in Maysville and Bryan Station Church.2122,916 Strode’s Station was associated by design with Bryan’s Station, 18 miles away.2123 Joshua Yates appeared at Bryan Station Church with a letter of referral from another unspecified church.916 The most plausible scenario was that the letter came from Limestone Church, which was closely associated with Bryan Station and in a place where Joshua had just been. Of note, James Dupuy, a fiery Baptist preacher, was at the Bryan Station church and performed the marriage of Dorcas Yates to Garret Lambert.818 In 1813, William Yates was a subscriber for the first American Baptist history, A General History of the Baptist Denomination in America, and Other Parts of the World.2124

The weakness of the fit is that this scenario leaves him as a grandfather at about 30 years of age, which would mean two successive generations of birth at 15 or 16 if we accept the few existing records at face value. (Wikipedia observes, “It is wise to exercise extreme caution with dates.”2125) If so, the situation would be unusual, but hardly without precedent in that environment. For instance, Dorcas Yates’s granddaughter (also name Dorcas) married at 15. William’s mother had her first child at 18.917 Early extramarital children certainly occur, sometimes legitimized by subsequent marriage. If, as some have suggested, Garrett Lambert’s morals were a bit on the loose site, it would be less surprising.519 As a fellow researcher commented, “In fact, that is what seems notable to me is the almost total lack of information that should be dangling out there for us. It must mean something.”2126 The marriage bond527 for Garrett’s and Dorcas’s union is moot on the point of her age, and strikingly includes the support of two of his family but no one of hers.

William was living in Montgomery County in 1850.2109