Eleanor and Edwina, affectionately called "Nellie" and "Eddie," lived for six years on the farm on the corner of St. Route 16 and York Street in Pataskala. Here they were raised by their grandfather, Stephen C. Williams, and his niece, Mary Joann Williams. "Aunt Joe," as she was called by all that knew her, moved to the farm in 1882 to help care for her widowed uncle and his two small granddaughters. The girls' father remarried in 1886, moving his two daughters back to Missouri. Following a fire that destroyed the family home in 1893, the sisters boarded with cousins in Eureka. Eleanor graduated in the summer of 1894 from DeSoto Normal School, then taught for a year before moving back to Ohio in 1895.
Eleanor lived with cousins in Celina for a year, before moving to Canton, where she was employed as a Western Union telegrapher from 1896-1900. During this time, she made frequent visits to relatives in Pataskala, and married Pataskala native Brigg Youmans in April 1900 in Stark County. Eleanor's and Brigg's wedding reception was reported to be "one of the swellest affairs ever given in Pataskala," "greatly enjoyed" by the 150 guests. Following their wedding, the couple moved into the house that still stands at the southeast corner of S. Main and Willow Streets in Pataskala. Their son, William, was born in 1905.
One night, when William was twelve and his mother was tucking him into bed, he said, "Mother, you don't write. You just talk about writing." These words sparked a writing career that spanned three decades, beginning with "The Man Who Wanted a Dog That Would Kill," a short story published in American Magazine in 1921. Eleanor was enrolled in the Home Study Department of Columbia University in 1925, and attempted to place at least one short story through New York literary agent F. M. Holly that year. Eleanor was an avid animal lover, and a friend asked her to contribute anecdotes about her pets to The Cat Courier—the newsletter of the Cat Fanciers Association. When the London-based periodical The Animals' Magazine began to copy the tales, the idea of writing and publishing animal stories seemed too good to pass up. Though her early work was geared toward an adult audience, she ultimately garnered success through children's stories. She signed on with Indiana publisher Bobbs-Merrill, releasing her first juvenile novel, Skitter Cat, in 1925. Skitter Cat and Little Boy (1926), and Skitter Cat and Major (1927) quickly followed.
William married Helen Abbott in February 1927—the same year Brigg passed away. Following the death of her husband that November, Youmans lived for a year in Santa Barbara, California, the setting of Skitter and Skeet (1928). When she returned to Pataskala, she moved into a small house just north of the railroad tracks known as the Redhead property, where she stayed for a decade. During these years, she wrote and published Teddy Horse (1930), Cinder (1933), Little Dog Mack (1936), and Waif (1937). In 1938, she moved to Atkinson Street, to a home she playfully nicknamed "Gray Shingles." Here, she completed The Great Adventures of Jack, Jock and Funny (1938)—coauthored with Ohio State professor and dog portrait artist Will Rannells—The Forest Road (1939), Timmy (1941), and Mount Delightful (1944). In addition to the short stories she published in The American Magazine, Cat Courier, and The Animals' Magazine, her work also appeared in Child Life, Junior Home, and in several grade-school readers.
Though largely forgotten today, Youmans was popular in her own time, publishing more than a dozen children’s novels with the Bobbs-Merrill Company between 1925-1947. She received hundreds of fan letters from young readers; numerous favorable reviews in the New York Times, New York Herald Tribune and elsewhere; and her work was implemented as required reading in public school systems across the U.S. Her last book, Mount Delightful (1944), won an Ohioana Award—alongside James Thurber’s The Great Quillow (1944). A letter Eleanor wrote to her sister dated November 6, 1944, indicates that following the success of Mount Delightful, she was beginning research on a new book about their mother's childhood during the Civil War. If the manuscript was completed, it was never published. In 1947, her publisher issued The Skitter Cat Book, a collected anthology of her first three novels, which was to be her final book publication. In her later years, failing eyesight and constant neuralgia kept the aging author from the writing desk. She passed away on October 8, 1968, at her son's home in Plain City, Ohio.
Youmans remains the subject of local interest in central Ohio. Recent articles on Youmans appear in Licking and West Licking County Historical Society sponsored publications, including Journey Through 200 Years: Vintage Vignettes from Licking County, Ohio (2009), and she was showcased in a weekly column on Ohio history in The Columbus Dispatch in June 2008. Though Youmans is best known for her novels centering on cats, dogs, and young children, she also wrote narratives about early Ohio settlers, including her own immigrant ancestors. Mount Delightful, for instance, details the emigration of her grandmother from Wales into the Welsh Hills of 1830s Ohio. Local historians value Youmans for her strong sense of history, and credit her with preserving nineteenth and early twentieth century culture through her writing, research, and photography. Youmans was an intellectual, residing in a small farming community. That she chose the life of a writer in her later years is remarkable, given the conservative climate of early twentieth century rural Ohio. It was a move that enabled her to transcend her earlier role of vocationless wife and mother, one that likewise provided financial autonomy. Youmans simultaneously preserved in narrative form the cultural norms of her time, while surpassing those norms through the vehicle of writing itself.
Top photo of Eleanor Youmans courtesy of Charles O. Davis
Center top photo of the Brigg and Eleanor Youmans home on southeast corner of Willow and Main, printed in Preservation 2000 of the West Licking Historical Society
Center photo of Eleanor Youmans courtesy of Susan Newland
Center bottom photo of "Gray Shingles" circa 1950, courtesy of the Ohioana Library
Bottom photo printed in Preservation 2000 of the West Licking Historical Society
