Tour of Homes

The landscape of Pataskala, Ohio, has changed quite a bit since its official establishment in 1851, and especially over the past decade, expanding from a rural village of 3,000, into a growing city of over 10,000, with a geographic range that quadrupled to its current approximate 40 square miles following a merger with Lima Township in 1996.  Every time I visit, it seems another half-dozen businesses and housing developments have popped up out of nowhere.  With this in mind, I thought I'd post some before and after photos of Eleanor Youmans' homes in Pataskala. 

Youmans was born in Maxville, Missouri, in 1876. When she was about five, she and her younger sister moved to Licking County, Ohio, to live on their grandfather's farm. The Williams homestead was located on the corner of St. Route 16 and York Street in Pataskala.  Here it is, off the "old mud pike," circa 1900:

Today, the Williams family farm has become the site of the Jefferson Ridge Condos, as pictured below:

Eleanor and her sister returned to Missouri in 1886, where she finished school and then taught for a year.  Back in Ohio in 1895, she lived with cousins in Celina, before moving to Canton.  She frequently visited her family in Pataskala during these years, and married Brigg Youmans in 1900. 

As newlyweds, Eleanor and Brigg moved into the house on the corner of Willow and Main Streets in Pataskala.  They spent their entire married life in this home, raising their son William, here.  If you look closely at the photo below, taken around 1900, you can see their dog Toodles sitting on a chair in the front lawn:

The house still stands, but the exterior has undergone a transformation, as has the street name (it was North Main when the Youmans' lived there, but it is South Main today).

William was married in the spring of 1927, and Brigg passed away that fall.  Eleanor spent a year in California, and when came back to Pataskala in 1928, she moved into the Redhead property, located on what was then North High Street, just north of the Railroad tracks, staying there until 1938. [Sorry, no before photo for this property].

After her decade in "the little five-room cottage" on High Street, she moved to a house on East Atkinson Street, which she cheekily nick-named "Grey Shingles."  According to an article by Carolyn Bentz, "the house was built by James Coons, the grandfather of Florence Coons Wilson and Aimee Coons Atkinson.  In fact, a niece was born in the house.  She was the wife of Charles and mother of Stanton and Ewing.  The house was over a hundred years old [when it was torn down]."  Pictured below circa 1945 and 1950:

Youmans resided on Atkinson until October 1968, when failing health prompted her move to the home of her son and daughter-in-law in Plain City, Ohio.  William sold the property in 1971 to the local fire department, and the house was torn down to increase the size of the fire department's parking lot:

Images from top:  Williams Farm, located on St. Rt. 16, photo courtesy of West Licking Historical Society, from Eleanor Youmans Glass Plate Negative Collection; Jefferson Ridge Condominiums on St. Rt 16, east of Pataskala; Brigg and Eleanor Youmans Home on southeast corner of Main and Willow Streets, from Eleanor Youmans Glass Plate Negative Collection, courtesy of West Licking Historical Society; House at what is now 245 South Main Street today; 291 South High Street today; East Atkinson Street house, circa 1945 courtesy of the Ohioana Library; East Atkinson Street house, circa 1950, courtesy of the Ohioana Library; Old Pataskala firehouse today, side view

Two More Short Stories!

After accidentally finding "Cinder and Inky Again" in an old issue of Child Life through a random ebay search, I had a hunch there was probably at least one other Youmans story published in the periodical.

When I attempted to locate older editions of Child Life through Interlibrary Loan, I learned just how rare this serial is.  Many facilities retain current editions, but only one library in the U.S. has copies available during the years Youmans would have been publishing.  Lucky for me, it is the Minneapolis Central branch of Hennepin County Library, a forty-minute drive from my in-laws'.  The trip was worth it, because among the dusty pages there were two more stories by Youmans: "Cinder" (1931) and "Cinder and Inky" (1932).  Unlike "Cinder and Inky Again" (1933), these two stories are taken directly from the published version of the novel Cinder (1933).

My husband wasn't exactly psyched about being dragged  into downtown Minneapolis to flip through old children's magazines by my side, but with his help, the hunt took little more than an hour, and he was the one to find both stories.  (I don't know why I'm surprised; when my contact lens fell out on our lawn earlier this year, he was the was the one to find the tiny shard of plastic embedded amongst hundreds of stems of grass long after I'd given up!)



Click on the page images to enlarge:


"Cinder." Child Life 10.6 (June 1931): 270-271. Illustrated by Ruth Eger.

"Cinder and Inky." Child Life 11.9 (Sept. 1932): 426-427. Illustrated by Ruth Eger.

Glass Plate Negatives, A Beaded Bag, and Pink Ladies

I knew I was in for a treat when I saw a small cardboard box labeled "Cat Pictures" in large, chalky script resting on the dining room table of West Licking Historical Society president Martha Tykodi.  I return to Ohio every summer, and this trip would include research on my writerly cousin, Eleanor Youmans.  Appointments were scheduled for the Billy Ireland Cartoon Library at Ohio State (more about that later); with Tykodi--a lifelong resident of Pataskala who, as a child, knew and admired Youmans and as an adult preserves her memory; and with Julie Brown--the daughter of Pataskala historian Carolyn Bentz, who also knew and wrote about Youmans.  

Next to the marked box containing seven glass plate negatives of Skitter, his brothers, and William, was a wooden antique cigar case holding several dozen more 4 x 5 emulsion coated plates, donated to the historical society by Bruce Baird, and a second, slightly larger, light gray metal case storing another sixteen 5 x 7 glass plate negatives given to the historical society by Virginia Gakle, a friend of Eleanor in her later years, whose husband purchased the negatives at her estate auction in 1968.

The images captured on the negatives are simply amazing.  To name but a few, there are snapshots of the elaborately furnished interior of the Youmans's Main Street home during their newly-wed years; candid shots of Eleanor's husband lounging on a chaise, cigar in hand and toddler son perched on his father's belly; photos of her son, William, with the mischievous Skitter cat as a kitten; poses of Youmans and her female friends dressed in their husband's suits and tuxes; and even an Art Nouveau inspired composition with a tastefully bare-bosomed Youmans cradling a bouquet of flowers.  What an absolute treasure this collection is.

Another rare item shared during this visit belongs to Julie Brown: a beaded leather drawstring pouch she inherited from her mother that was originally given to Youmans in 1902 or 1903 by her friend Dora Jones (pictured right), along with a long strand of blue beads.  A handwritten letter inside the bag, addressed to Lena Fravel--another of my Pataskala cousins on my mother's side and friend of Youmans--explains that the bag once belonged to Sitting Bull's wife, and came from Canton, Oklahoma Territory.  The bag, however, tells a different story.  Inside, someone hand wrote the following:  Mrs. Geronimo, Apache, Canton, OT., Sept. 20, 1903.  The letter Youmans wrote to explain the bag was composed in her final weeks, and contradicts what is written inside the pouch in several ways (the fact that anything is written inside at all; the name of the Native American to whom the bag supposedly belonged, and the year Youmans obtained the bag).  Whatever its true history, the bag is beautiful.  It's clear why this artifact was so dear to Youmans.   

A huge thank you goes out to Martha, Julie, and my mom for encouraging me to study Youmans and for sharing these treasures with me!


Pictured Top Left: Judy Cruikshank, Julie Brown, Jackie Cruikshank Vogt, Martha Tykodi
Middle Right Photo: Courtesy of West Licking Historical Society, from Eleanor Youmans Glass Plate Negative Collection

Artifacts Housed in Pataskala Public Library

Pataskala librarian Cathy Lantz is the resident expert on Eleanor Youmans at the local public library.  She was kind enough to allow me to photograph several artifacts donated by the author.  See pics below:

According to the card inside the frame, this large weaving is a Tapa Cloth, "made of Mulberry Bark and decorated by the natives of the Samoan Islands."  Youmans donated the cloth to the library in 1968, most likely as she was discarding many of her belongings before moving in with her son and daughter-in-law in Plain City, Ohio, where she passed away just a few weeks later at the age of 92.

The Tapa Cloth is mentioned in Skitter and Skeet, as part of the collection of "curious things brought from many parts of the world" displayed in the home of the family's well-traveled Santa Barbara cousins (26).  I'm not sure if the trip taken by Mother, Father, Little Boy, and Skitter to California detailed in Skitter and Skeet is more fact or fiction.  The book was published in 1928, following Youmans' year long residence in California, newly widowed, empty-nested, and without Skitter, so it could be a fictionalized memory (as many of the Skitter stories seem to be), but I do wonder if it might instead be a fantasy constructed on the page, created as she worked through the dramatic changes re-scaffolding her personal life.

~ ~ ~

These three framed pieces are original illustrations by the famed dog portrait artist, Will Rannells, appearing in two of the three works on which he collaborated with Youmans, including Waif: The Story of Spe (1937), The Great Adventures of Jack, Jock and Funny (1938), and Timmy: The Dog That Was Different (1941).  West Licking Historical Society president Martha Tykodi recalls attending an event hosted by the library in the late 1930s / early 1940s—when the library was still located in its original home in the Pataskala Town Hall—featuring Rannells and Youmans together.

The images are on display in the children's section of the library, where they've been housed ever since I can remember.  Labels on the backs of the frames offer a date of 1976, but this was the year the library began a new inventory system, rather than the year in which the art pieces were obtained.  I suspect the portraits were probably gifts to the library from Youmans, perhaps the same year as the Tapa Cloth, as she gave away many of her possessions at that time. 

I hope these mementos will not suffer the same fate as the collection of books authored by Youmans once owned by the Pataskala library—they were donated to the Granville Historical Society.  Youmans lived all but eighteen of her ninety-two years as a Pataskala resident, and the traces of her legacy belong in her home town.