Lenski, Lois
(Oct. 14, 1893 - Sept. 11, 1974)Whatever it was, whether Lenski, Helinski, or a variant, Lois Lenski, who wrote and illustrated more than 150 children's books between 1927 and 1971, was of Polish ancestry, as her brother wrote to me just before her death when she was blind and, owing to poor health, unable to reply to me. "Some of our Lenski relatives have changed the family name, omitting especially the Polish end 'ski'" he wrote, and now, 25 years later, l have enough information to bring her story to an end.
Had the progenitor of the family remained in Pomerania, now in Poland, the chances that his sons and daughters would have married predominately into other Polish families. After he came to the United States - the melting pot of the world - the 1880 census of Put-in-Bay, Ohio, a summer resort in the western end of Lake Erie, revealed that Dr. Ch. J. Lenski, 41 years old, as the first Lenski in the United States was listed, and his wife, Catherine, six years younger, had a daughter, Matilda, 10, in New York; two daughters, Kati, 8, and Josie, 6, in Virginia; and a son, George, 4, and a daughter, Mary, 1, in Ohio. The report also stated that Dr. Lenski, whose first name the grandchildren thought was William, was born in Poland of Polish parents. For whatever reason, no census was taken of Put-in-Bay in 1900. None of the aforegiven names were listed in the censuses of Jackson, about forty miles west of Ann Arbor, Michigan, where Lois' grandfather supposedly received his citizenship papers. The search for these seven people yielded no results.
According to Lois's memory in 1920, which is not always reliable, she said that her father, Richard Charles Henry Lenski, whose memory might have been worse, was born about 1865 at Gresfenberg (Polish name unknown), in western Pomerania, and sailed from Szczecin, or Stettin in German, the port on the left bank of the Oder River, in Western Pomerania. The ship arrived in New York on April 2, 1872. It stands to reason that memory and history don't always match. Still worse, the conflicting statements have to be taken for what they are worth.
Eventually R. C. H. Lenski, as he was known, became a Lutheran clergyman and a good Greek scholar. He was married twice. When he was 23 years old, he married a schoolteacher in Franklin County, Ohio. Nobody agrees on her first name. Lois said it was Marietta Young; Gerhard called her Mary Young. The minister and his wife had three girls and two boys, all of them born in different places. Lois Lenore was born in Springfield, Ohio, on October 14, 1893, and lived there until 1899 when the family moved to Anna, Ohio, a tiny village in Shelby County, Ohio, where it lived twelve years. In 1911, she graduated from the high school in Sidney, Ohio, the closest one to Anna, and shortly afterward her father was appointed dean at Columbia University, Columbus, Ohio. In 1926, after the children were grown, he married a 38-year-old woman, Emma, and lived in a comfortable house near the college campus. He was the author of a number of religious books.
Lois Lenski wanted to follow in her mother's footsteps and become a teacher. In 1915, when she received a degree in education and a teacher's certificate, she followed the advice of her art professors at Ohio State University and moved to New York to develop her artistic talents. In the fall of 1920 she traveled to England and Italy to study and work and in 1921, when she returned to New York, she married Arthur Covey, whom she met before at the Art Students League, and together they raised his two children from a previous marriage and their own son. It was in London, while she was a student of the Westminster School of Art, that she illustrated a book for the first time.
Shortly after Stephen Covey was born in February 1929, the family moved to a 139-year-old house, called Greenacres, in the crossroads settlement of Harwinton, with 949 people, five miles from Torrington, Connecticut. In the years to come, while Arthur Covey was away painting murals in libraries and other public institutions, Lois Lenski grew in love with the house and wondered how the family that lived there a century earlier managed their lives. As a result, she wrote a novel of Harwinton under the guise of Phebe Fairchild, the daughter of a sea captain, and her life in the rustic community. It was published by Stokes in 1936. It led to A-Going to the Westward, the story of a little girl in central Ohio, in 1937; Bound Girl of Cobbie Hill, under the guise of Mindwell Gibbs, an indentured servant, 1938; Ocean-Born Mary, life aboard ship in the olden days, 1939; Blueberry Corners, which takes up the struggles of two little girls in the hills surrounding Greenacres, 1940; Indian Captive: The Story of Mary Jemison, 1941; and Puritan Adventure, dealing with the children of a colony in the first years of its life, 1944.
As she grew older, the winters in Connecticut were extremely hard on her and in the early 1940s the doctor advised her to go south, spend the winter months in a warm climate, and return to Connecticut, where she would live 35 years. On the way to their winter quarters, first in Louisiana and then in Florida, Arthur and Lois Covey observed the way children lived in the Louisiana bayou country and young strawberry pickers in Florida. She set out to portray their lives in Bayou Suzette and Strawberry Girl. The prestigious Newbery Award was presented to her in 1946 for Strawberry Girl. It led to a series of children's books on the way children live in Louisiana, North Carolina, Alabama, Oklahoma, Arkansas, Texas, South Dakota, Iowa, California, Vermont, Mississippi, West Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Oregon. Between 1943 and 1968 she wrote 17 novels. For all of them she drew upon real people, with whom she lived, listened to their speeches and stories, visited many places to draw on-the spot sketches, and used the histories of the regions. Which was more than Edna Ferber and Upton Sinclair did in the same vein for older readers. The historical novels are as much fun to read today as they were in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s.
For more than fifty years she illustrated 57 books for other authors, and wrote and illustrated nearly 100 of her own books, some of which have been translated into fourteen languages. Thrown in between are books of poetry and short stories, songs and plays for children. She wrote an autobiography of her life in Ohio, Journey into Childhood, in 1972. All the books she wrote are listed in a bibliography on the Internet. To top all of this, Centennial, Colorado, has an elementary school named after her. No writer contributed more to American literature for children than she did. Many of her books have become classics in children literature.
The awards, honorary degrees, and medals she received for her contribution to children literature were very prestigious. Among them were the Regina Medal of the Catholic Library Association and the University of Southern Mississippi Silver Medallion.
After Arthur Covey died in Pinellas County, Florida, in a house he built in 1951, Lois donated 250 pieces of his art collection to his alma mater, Southwestern College, at Winfield, Kansas, from which she received an honorary degree in 1969. When she died in the same home September 11, 1974, her son sent much of her collection, including manuscripts, illustrations, letters, and other memorabilia, to the University of Southern Mississippi at Hattiesburg, Mississippi, for study, scholarship or research. Last but not least the family has set up a charitable institute in her name to provide books to children who might not be able to get them.
From: Edward Pinkowski (2009)