Don't Be Evil, Google--I Love You Too Well to Give You Up

Putting it mildly, the recent Google Book Settlement is certainly not all rainbows and butterflies for the publishing world--or for authors who want to retain control over their writing (read an excellent break-down of the settlement and its troubling repercussions here).  But, I confess the immediate payoff of having access--even in "snippet" form--to otherwise unsearchable data is remarkably useful to an individual researcher like myself.

"Don't Be Evil Google" image by Buddy Duncan, as posted on The Boston Phoenix "Phlog"

When I began graduate school, I enrolled in a required course that covered the basics of advanced library research, and of course I've picked up a trick or two along the way as a paid research assistant and scholar-in-training conducting my own thesis / dissertation driven research, so I know my way around print / online bibliographies and the like.  But there are, of course, always limitations to what gets recorded in the first place, or in figuring out the most useful search terms to find what is documented.  Like it or not, the Google Book Settlement has cleared a few more pathways as I recover the writing of Eleanor Youmans, and I can't help but feel excited about these new discoveries.

For months, I've been looking for her entry in Who's Who, unsuccessfully, though our university library has rows upon rows of shelves housing copies of several of its imprints.  And, just a month or two ago, I'd thoroughly exhausted all "Eleanor Youmans" searches (and its variants), including those within Google Books.  Now, seemingly overnight, there is a whole host of hits that never surfaced before.

Turns out, Youmans first appears in a 1937 volume of American Women: The Official Who's Who Among the Women of the Nation.  From this entry, I learned the titles of two other magazines in addition to Child Life in which she published short stories, one being Junior Home, and the other The Animals' Magazine (based in London, and which I'm fairly certain is the title of the English magazine that "copied" her early Cat Courier stories, inspiring her to pursue novel writing).  The Who's Who blurb also narrows her location during her year-long residence in California specifically to Santa Barbara.  Other "snippet" references lead to an article she wrote for The Writer in 1928, several more book reviews, quite a few mentions of her work in curriculum guides, and three more short stories anthologized in two Bobbs-Merrill readers.  

I'm taking an Electronic Texts course this semester, and about to begin a research assistantship with UNL's Center for Digital Research in the Humanities, so I'm looking forward to learning more about the moral and technical issues implicit in the Google Books Settlement--and in digital archiving in general.  Though I have a deep enthusiasm for Eleanor and her writing, enjoy creating a space where I can bring together the information I'm discovering about her, and hope to make her work more accessible to a larger audience, I'm often dubious about revealing too much on the web.  I don't want to infringe on any copyrights of book reviews or library holdings, or make public that which should be kept private.  Plus, if I've just spent hours, months, or even years talking with people in the know, applying for competitive library residencies, trekking cross-country to view elusive materials, scanning rare documents and images, do I really just want to give it up to the public realm so easily?  And yet, isn't sharing and disseminating knowledge--especially if it fosters greater enthusiasm and appreciation--the whole point?  Whatever the answer, in an ever-increasingly online world, the ease of posting otherwise hard-to-find material sometimes feels to me a bit slippery.

The Alward School

See this house?  It wasn't always a private residence.  Until 1928, it was a one-room school house!  It also just so happens to be the childhood alma mater of Eleanor Youmans, who attended the school from 1881 to 1886.

The Alward School, one of nine former sub-districts of the Harrison Township School District, was built in the triangular shaped lot formed by Beecher and York Roads and State Route 16 in Pataskala.  It began as a log building called Nichols School, which was replaced by a frame building in 1845.  Thirty-eight years later, in 1883, the frame structure was torn down, and a third, brick structure replaced it.  The new school, renamed Alward, cost $2,157 to construct.  Today, the original brick hides under contemporary white siding, several porches have been added to the exterior, and an inviting tire swing sways under massive trees.

Youmans composed a history and poem commemorating the school for a 1924 Alward School reunion, both of which appear in a the 7 May 1936 special "Golden" edition of the Pataskala Standard.  She writes:

Three schoolhouses have stood on the triangular field formed by the crossing of York Street and Old Columbus Road and another road which intersects Columbus Road and York Street from the north, three miles east of Pataskala.  Only the last building, built of brick in 1883, by a man named Stothard, supervised by Bert Alward, bore the name Alward School.

The ground on which the three schoolhouses stood belonged to the late Benjamin Nichols and his father before him, and was donated for the use of a school by them.  The first building, of logs, was named the Nichols School, and stood opposite the farmhouse now owned by Curtis Bowlby, facing south toward York Street, on the southwest point of the triangle.

The second building (also called Nichols School) was frame, built by B. F. Sutherland, sometime in the fifties (as the writer's father was born in 1845, attended there with his numerous brothers and sisters.)  It may have been the late forties.

No copy of the old registers is available, to ascertain the names of early teachers.  Mrs. George Nichols was a teacher there, Mrs. Ella Martin, Martha Clark; the last person to teach in the old frame schoolhouse was the late Fred Thomas, beloved by all who knew him.  He also taught the first term in the new brick schoolhouse, and subsequent term; he was followed by Elmer Morrow, Margaret Forsyth and Rosa Rogers, during the time the writer went to that school.  A list of all the teachers of these schools, which endured for over sixty years, would fill the column of a newspaper.  Sometimes there were two teachers in one year; for example, Martha Clark taught the summer term in the frame building, in 1882, and Fred Tomas taught the winter term.

It is a striking commentary upon the times, that, in the present day, when thousands of country schools have closed for lack of funds, we descendants of those who attended the Nichols School, and who ourselves attended the Alward School, can find no record of the district.  And yet we like to believe that we live in a more enlightened age.

Where we first went to school, three roads
Spread wide inviting arms,
Beckoning travelers onward,
Through hills, to peaceful farms,
A stream ran not too far away,
Forming a quiet pool
And skating pond, for childish play
Where we first went to school.

Bobolinks sang on the fence;
Bees hummed in jimpson weeds;
The air was filled with thistle down
And shining milk weed seeds;
Along the hedgerows, rabbits hid;
Green pawpaw bushes, cool,
Held nests of tiny feathered things,
Where we first went to school.

No other skies have been so blue;
Nor sunshine beamed so bright;
Birdsongs were always sweeter there
And clouds more billowing white.
No teachers ever were so kind--
Indeed, that child were fool,
Who could not learn contentment
Where we first went to school!

In addition to the school's history and the poem she wrote in its honor, there is also an image of the Alward School in the collection of glass negatives taken and owned by Youmans, which shows the structure's original brick facade.  Who knows, but maybe it's Eleanor herself posing on the front steps!

My thanks go out to Martha Tykodi for supplying a copy of the original article, and granting me access to the original glass plate negative!

Top Image: Photo of former Alward School building, now a private residence, July 2010
Bottom Image:  The Alward School, courtesy of West Licking Historical Society, from Eleanor Youmans Glass Plate Negative Collection