Lieutenant Joseph Davis Yonts was born near Paradise, October 25, 1841, and died in Greenville, June 9, 1896.  When the Eleventh Kentucky Infantry (Federal) was organizing he enlisted as a private in Company H, and after the battle of Shiloh became first lieutenant.  Although he was wounded a number of times he remained with his company until the close of the war.  Immediately after the war he removed to Greenville, and for more than thirty years took an active interest in the business affairs of the town.  In 1865 he became a clerk in the store of Edward R. Weir, Sr., and continued in that work until the Greenville Grange Store was organized.  He and Joseph G. Ellison managed this cooperative store during the few years of its existence.  In the latter part of the seventies he and his brother, Edward L. Yonts, began rehandling tobacco in Greenville, and continued in that business until 1880, when they opened a drug store on the northeast corner of Main and Main Cross streets.  A few years later he bought his brother’s interest in this store, and remained in the drug business until the time of his death.  Joseph D. Yonts was a son of Philip Yonts and his wife Adaline Davis Yonts.  In 1872 he married Delia L. Kingsley, daughter of Edward Kingsley of Rochester and his wife Mary Susan Myers, daughter of David Myers of Myers’ Chapel.  Their only son is Morton K. Yonts, now of Louisville.

from A History of Muhlenberg County, Otto A. Rothert, 1913