YERGASON, Edgar Smith,
Decorator and Furnisher.

Edgar S. Yergason, one of the most widely known and successful of interior decorators, and who bore the distinction of having decorated many of the wealthiest homes in the country, including the first House of the Land, was born September 10, 1840 in the town of Windham, Connecticut, son of Christopher Yergason, born at Norwich, Connecticut, and served as lieutenant in State Militia, and Charlotte Ann (Smith) Yergason, born in Windham, Connecticut, descendant of Elder and Love Brewster.
Edgar S. Yergason was educated in the schools of his native town, and graduated from the Pine Grove Seminary in South Windham. Upon completing his education he removed to Hartford, Connecticut, to accept a position as clerk with the firm of Talcott & Post, dry goods
merchants. He remained with the firm until the outbreak of the Civil War, at which time he volunteered his services and served as a private in Company B, Twenty-second Connecticut Volunteers. At the end of his term of service he resumed connection with the same firm, continuing until 1881, in which year it was was dissolved, and Mr. Yergason became associated with the junior partner in the formation of the firm of William H. Post & Company. The excellent quality and high order of the work of this firm soon gained prominence and they were commissioned with many important contracts. The entire department of decorating was under the personal supervision of Mr. Yergason, and his superior taste and executive ability in that line was no small factor in the firm's success. He attained wide prominence in work done at the
White House under Presidents Benjamin Harrison and William McKinley, and at the State Capital at Albany and other noted places. Probably Mr. Yergason 's work at the White House under President Harrison's administration attracted more attention than did his work for private persons in Washington and other parts of the East. Mr. Yergason obtained his first chance to do work at the White House through one of his customers, Secretary of the Treasury William Windham, who was a close friend of the President's family. Mr. Yergason decorated the apartment of Captain George F. Lemon, of Washington, owner of the "Washington National Tribune," a paper devoted to the interests of veterans of the Civil War. Mrs. Harrison and the wives of four members of the cabinet visited the apartment to see the recently completed
work and were so delighted with it that Mr. Yergason received an invitation the next day to visit the White House with a view to suggesting changes in the Blue Room. His suggestions were well received and he was commissioned to do considerable work, not only in the noted Blue Room, but also in other parts of the building. He installed the first electric lighting system ever used in the building. During the years 1890 and 1892, he was frequently called to the White House by President Harrison or his wife to suggest desired improvements in the decorating of certain parts of the building. Among the private mansions that Mr. Yergason furnished in Washington was that of John A. Logan, United States senator from Illinois. This mansion was leased by William Jennings Bryan when he became Secretary of State at the start of the Wilson administration. The house is one of the most elegantly furnished mansions in Washington today and many of the draperies and carpets in it are the ones Mr. Yergason put there in 1892. Mr. Yergason was acquainted with many of the most prominent men of the United
States between 1890 and 1900. Among his friends have been Thomas A. Edison, the inventor; Richard J. Gattling, who perfected the first gun which bears his name; General Horace Porter, who was a member of General Grant's staff in the Civil War; James G. Blame, Thomas Platt, General W. T. Sherman, General Philip H. Sheridan, General E. Whitaker, General Joseph R. Hawley, Captain George F. Lemon, Admiral George Dewey, Actor Joseph Jefferson, Artist Albert Bierstadt, and other noted men.
For over a quarter of a century Mr. Yergason was collecting valuable relics with the result that his collection is one the rarest and most unusual of its kind. The range of the items comprising it is extremely wide, and the great men and events which they recall increase their
value. To mention all of this wonder collection would take up consideral space, but perhaps the most valuable are the two flags which were used to drape the box in Ford's Theatre at Washington where President Abraham Lincoln was murdered on the night of April 14,
1865, as he was watching a performance of the "American Cousin" with Mrs. Lincoln. One of the flags in which Booth's spur caught as he jumped out from Lincoln's box, located on the second floor the theatre, is of silk and is torn in half. The other half is in a glass box in the hall of the treasury building in Washington. He received a vote of thanks from the Joint Assembly of the Legislature June 13, 1899, for the gift of a war relic, the body of a tree containing five cannon balls from the battlefield of Chickamauga and placed in the Capitol at Hartford.
Mr. Yergason was a member of the Society of Sons of the American Revolution, being a descendant of Elder and Love Brewster; member of Robert 0. Tyler Post, Grand Army of the Republic; member of Army and Navy Club of Connecticut; of Amaranth Dramatic Club of Brooklyn, New York; of Aldine Merchants Club, New York; of Republican Club of New York; of Amen Corner Republican Headquarters, New York State, Avenue Hotel, New York; honory member of Company K, First Regiment Connecticut State Militia; member of Company B, Twenty-second Regiment Volunteers, War of the Rebellion, 1862 and 1863 ; honorary member of Old Guard, Washington, D. C., July, 1890. He was one of five young men who organized the Wide Awake Torch Light Marching Campaign Club for the election of W. A. Buckingham, Governor, February 25, 1860. The enthusiasm created extended all over the State, resulted in his election, and in the fall clubs were
in all the northern States, creating great enthusiasm in the campaign and election of Abraham Lincoln, President. He served as colonel on staff at the inauguration of Presidents McKinley and Roosevelt, March 4, 1897, and also of Roosevelt and Fairbanks at Washington,
D. C. March 4, 1901.
Mr. Yergason married Emeline B. Mose1ey, daughter of D. B. Moseley, of Hartford, and they were the parents of two daughters, and a son, Robert M., who is a physician with the rank of captain in United States Army, of the World War.