Harry Chester Yerxa was born in Hamilton, North Dakota when it was still the Dakota Territory. His parents, Fred and Nellie owned an Indian Trading Post. The Yerxa family owned mercantile stores (groceries and sundries) in Fargo and Minneapolis / Saint Paul.
When Harry was a teenager, the family moved to California where they became prosperous citrus ranchers. Harry became involved with the wholesale hardware business. Their fortunes reversed in 1913 when a disastrous freeze hit Southern California. Harry, his wife, Edna Staples Yerxa, and daughter, Jeanetta, moved to Oakland and Harry opened a chain of grocery stores.
He died "from a complication of maladies"; actually liver cancer, in 1920, age 34.
Harry is buried (in Sunset View Cemetery, El Cerrito, Contra Costa County California) with four relatives; Fred R. Yerxa, his father; Jeanetta C. Yerxa, his daughter; Rodney Yerxa, his nephew and Margurite Lawrence Yerxa, his niece-in-law. Nellie Cabot Yerxa, his mother, owned the plot but is not interred there.