Biography: George W. Yocum

George W. Yocum

Source: The Montgomery Ledger (Pottstown, PA), Tuesday, January 13, 1885.

Mr. George W. Yocom, of Hayes Grove, Cumberland County, PA, has been
spending several days in Pottstown, visiting relatives and friends. He is
a first cousin of Messrs Frank A. Yocom, of Pottstown, and Edward D. Yocom,
of Upper Pottsgrove, and has numerous other connections in this place and
vicinity. Mr. Yocom, who is a hale and pleasant gentleman of 58 years,
left here with his father, Samuel Yocom, and family, consisting of a wife
and six children, in 1840, settling at Centreville, Cumberland County. The
father, mother, two sons and one daughter, are since deceased, leaving
three sons: George W. Yocom, residing at Hayes Grove; Samuel H. Yocom, at
Jacksonville, Cumberland County; and Henry A. Yocom of Harrisburg, still
living. Mr. Yocom, who is now visiting here, is an enterprising and
intelligent carpenter and builder, and has erected a number of new
dwellings at Hayes Grove and vicinity the past year. He has a family
consisting of a wife and four children, two of his sons having settled in
Illinois.

Since moving away from Pottstown in the “log cabin and hard
cider” days of 1840, he has been back three times in 1850 and in 1853, and
now, after a long gap of 32 years our Cumberland friend calls around
again. He expresses himself as greatly pleased with our nice looking town,
and does not see many old houses and buildings which he remembered when a
boy. The improvement and progress of Pottstown he considers wonderful, and
he had to look around a few times to make sure he was in the right
place. When the Reading Railroad was building, Mr. Yocom helped at filling
up and making embankments at the upper end of town. His father owned a
home and cart and shoveled and loaded, while the son George drove the team
and unloaded. He recollects, away back forty-four years ago, some of the
then well known citizens, such as Jesse Ives, Peter Bechtel, Dr. VanBuskirk
Sr., Jacob Weaver, James Rittenhouse, George Bechtel, Henry Davidheiser,
Samuel Davidheiser, Henry Bucher, and others all of whom with the exception
of the last two or three have passed away.

Within a few miles of Pottstown, in Montgomery and Berks Counties, the first Yocoms (spelled
originally Jocomb) came over from Sweden and settled, 150 years or more
ago, but their descendants are scattered over many counties of this State
and many states of the Union. It is a good thing for relatives thus
separated to come back to the starting place occasionally, to look up the
other branches of the ancestral tree, and to establish anew the lines and
corner-stones of kinship. Mr. George W. Yocom has been doing this; but as
thirty-two years is pretty long between visits, we hope he has hunted up
old friends and “missing links” of the family enough to induce him to come
soon again.

Submitted by: Betty Burdan.