Eliza A. Youmans (1826–1914)

Eliza Ann Youmans was born in Greenfield, New York, one of seven children of Vincent Youmans, a farmer and mechanic, and his wife Catherine Scofield, a former teacher. In the winter of 1833-1834, an illness swept through the family that badly affected the eyes of her eldest brother, Edward Livingston Youman. Eliza and her siblings read to him for hours, and she helped him with his chemistry experiments. In 1839, he lost his eyesight entirely for a few years. To further her usefulness as a tutor, in 1843 Eliza attended classes in chemistry in Fairfield, New York. Later she studied agricultural chemistry in the New York City laboratory of Thomas Antisell and worked as a teacher. Though Eliza pursued an education in order to help her brother complete his, she also advanced her own knowledge of botany and of early childhood education that stands on its own. In 1870, she published a textbook, First Book of Botany, designed to Cultivate the Observing Powers of Children, followed by Second Book of Botany in 1873. She prepared an enlarged edition of Henslow's Botanical Charts in 1873. In 1875, she published a translation from the French of The Natural History of Man by biologist Armand de Quatrefages. Other works included Descriptive Botany, a Guide to the Classification of Plants with a Popular Flora (1885); and an abridgment of Bentley's Physiological Botany (1886). She also contributed to the Popular Science Monthly founded by her brother in 1872 and other periodicals.