My initial interest in the Yates lineage and Fred C. Yates specifically, began at an early age when my mother, Edith Jane (Yates) Riffe, introduced me to the shoebox. I have always thought of it as a shoebox, because it is about that size, but it is actually more of an all purpose box. Mother kept her most prized possessions in it, letters from her father, Fred C. Yates, and a handful of notebooks and documents that had been passed down from him.