Date: 1817-1896
Rev. Stephen Yerkes, D.D., was born in Bucks County, Pennsylvania, June 28, 1817, and died in Danville on March 28, 1896. He was an 1837 graduate of Yale University and studied theology in Baltimore under the guidance of his pastor, Robert J. Breckinridge.
For many years he taught school in Baltimore, and in 1832 became Professor of Ancient Languages at Transylvania University in Lexington, Kentucky. In 1857 he joined Breckinridge on the faculty of the Danville Theological Seminary, where he served for thirty-nine years until his death. Yerkes was Breckinridge’s right-hand man, and upon the death of the latter in 1871, became the guiding spirit of the Seminary.