Content warning: slavery
About the Project
The Diary of Ella Youmans Project first began during the early years of COVID, when a local resident brought a diary to Oxford County Archives in hopes that staff could help determine the diary’s provenance and decipher the text. Staff soon discovered that the diary belonged to a young woman named Ella Youmans, who would later become the mother of Woodstock artist Florence Carlyle. Moreover, staff discovered she had an incredible story to tell of her year working as a teacher in Wilson, North Carolina before the outbreak of the American Civil War.
Upon the diary’s formal donation to the Woodstock Art Gallery, staff at the Gallery and Archives began working on bringing her diary to life. This exhibit is an opportunity to personally come to know Ella through her own thoughts and words on the sociocultural aspects of life for women in 1860, and covers a variety of subjects such as education, religion, politics, relationship and marriage. The diary also includes her travels to and from her family home in Picton, Ontario to North Carolina and her views on the American South, enslaved persons and the impending war.
"‘Ella would later become the mother
of Woodstock artist Florence Carlyle."
Original Diary
Please feel free to download the transcript of the Ella Youmans diary in its original form. Reading the full text may help readers gain further insight into the fascinating life of Ella.
Content warning: In the following pages, you will find references to slavery and to enslaved people. In some cases, Ella articulates her distain for slavery and support of emancipation while in other excepts she expresses a desire for the army to fight against the enslaved people should they revolt, uses offensive language and expresses fear around enslaved people. There is a description of physical assault of an enslaved person by police.
Ella Youmans
Emily (nee Youmans) Carlyle was born in 1834, in Picton, ON, where her ancestors had received a United Empire Loyalist land grant. Emily was raised in a comfortable home, where she was prepared for a life of domestic responsibility and motherhood. However, she also studied to be a teacher at Fort Edward Collegiate Institute in New York State, receiving an education that would have been considered superior for a woman at that time. In 1859 she accepted a position at the ladies college at St. Austin’s Institute in Wilson, North Carolina.
With the outbreak of the American Civil War she returned to Canada, a year later, and married William Carlyle. They would go on to have seven children together, including Florence Carlyle. In 1871, the family moved to Woodstock where Emily created an art studio for local children. Sensing her own daughter’s artistic talents, she arranged private drawing and painting lessons with William Lees Judson. Emily Youmans Carlyle passed away on December 20, 1912 in Woodstock, Ontario.