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.

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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.