A. J. YANCY (1898-1981) &
ETHEL MORGAN YANCY (1894-1979)

Photos & Biography submitted by Mary Jo & Earl Yancy joearl@reachme.net

A. J. (Jay) Yancy was born September 2, 1898 in Alvin, Brazoria County, Texas to Charles F. and Virgie (Bledsoe) Yancy. The 1900 Galveston flood hit when he was a little over two years old, and although Alvin was about 20 miles or so from Galveston, the family evidently was hit hard by the storm. Family story says that Charley tied Jay into a horse trough to keep him from blowing away and then went back into the house for his pregnant wife. They made it through the storm without any serious injuries.

By the time of the 1910 census, the family was living in Coleman County, Texas where Charley had bought a farm or two. Jay met his bride-to-be, Ethel Morgan (who was born in Dighton, Kansas) when his maternal aunt, Etna Bledsoe Clark, and Ethel, who was working for Etna Clark, came by train to visit the Charley Yancy family and other relatives. We believe this was prior to, or during, his enlistment in the Navy. Jay enlisted on April 14, 1917, and served overseas from July of 1917 to June of 1919. Family story says that he had a couple of ships shot out from under him. His war service certificate does show that after training at Great Lakes Naval Station he served aboard several ships.

He had continued to correspond with Ethel Morgan, and later in the year of 1919 he travelled to Anthony, Kansas, where Ethel was living with her aunt, and they were married there on October 25, 1919. They returned to Coleman County, Texas, where their first son, Edgar R. was born. By April of 1923 they had moved to the Yuma, Arizona, area where their second son, Earl was born. They later moved to Los Angeles County, California for a time, and eventually wound up in the San Joaquin Valley of California, where they lived at various times in the towns of Stratford, Hanford, Lemoore (where he owned the Coffee Cup Cafe), Waukena, and Corcoran. In 1933 the family went back to Texas where Jay worked in East Texas on a drilling rig, ran a cafe in Santa Anna, Texas, and worked on the family farm there. They then moved back to their home in California, and then bought a farm in the town of Corcoran.

Jay retired from farming in 1961 and moved to the town of Tulare, California, but by 1964, he had come out of retirement and bought a grocery store in the town of Shandon, California. He retired again in 1969 and moved once again to Tulare.

In 1974 he suffered a stroke and was a resident of nursing homes in Tulare and Porterville. In 1976 his son, Edgar and wife, Barbara, took him from the nursing home, and moved Jay and Ethel to their home in Bullhead City, Arizona. Ethel died in 1979 in Arizona and was buried in the Tulare Cemetery in Tulare, Calfornia. Jay came back to Porterville in 1981 where he died, and he also was buried in Tulare Cemetery.