The name Yeats, alias Yates and Yeates, Is on record in Dublin in the seventeenth century. The ancestor of the well known Co. Sligo family was Jervis Yeats, a citizen of Dublin who died in 1712. The first in Co. Sligo was Church of Ireland rector of Drumcliff. He was grandfather of John Butler Yeats (1839-1922) the artist, who had two famous sons, William Butler Yeats (1865-1939), the poet, and Jack Butler Yeats (1870-1957) the leading artist in Ireland in the present century.