“SAMUEL STEWART YANTIS has been a member of the Lexington bar for over twenty years, and his individual talents have brought him a high position as a Kentucky lawyer.  For many years he was associated in practice with the late Col. W.C.P. Breckenridge and with John T. Shelby.  He was an associate of Colonel Breckenridge from 1899 to 1904.

Mr. Yantis was born on his father’s farm at Poplar Plains in Fleming County, Kentucky, December 9 1873, son for Robert H. and Mary (Howe) Yantis.  His father who was born at Lancaster, Kentucky, February 2, 1838, was educated for medicine and graduated from Jefferson Medical College at Philadelphia with the class of 1860.  He at once located and for several years enjoyed an extensive professional practice at Poplar Plains.  He finally gave up medicine as a career and devoted his remaining years to farming and various official and business interests.  He represented his county in the Legislature in 1879-80 and from 1886 to 1890 was county judge of Fleming County.  He was active in the democratic party and a member of the Christian Church.  Judge Yantis died in September, 1918.  His wife was born at Poplar Plains in October, 1842 and died in 1910.  Of their nine children four are still living.  Samuel S. being the seventh in age.

Samuel Stewart Yantis improved the opportunities to acquire a liberal education beginning in the public schools of Flemingsburg, graduating from the Kentucky Wesleyan College at Winchester, in 1896, continuing his academic studies for one year at Princeton University, and from 1897 to 1899 was a student of Harvard College of Law.  On September 20, 1899, Mr. Yantis located at Lexington and became associated with Colonel Breckinridge and for twenty-one years his services have increasingly been employed as one one of the able members of the bar.  He is a member of the State Bar Association, votes as a republican and is affiliated with Lodge No. 89 of the Elks.

April 20, 1904, Mr. Yantis married Sadie Ware Fogg, who was born in Woodford County, Kentucky, oldest of the three living children of Richard J. and Susie (Hawkins) Fogg.  Her parents were natives of Woodford County and farmers. Her father died at the age of forty and her mother in 1907 at the age of fifty.”

Source:  History of Kentucky by William Elsey Connelly and Ellis Merton Coulter, Vol. 3, The American Historical Society, Chicago and NY, 1922, page 320