Youmans History in New Scotland

For over 115 years, members of the Youmans Family have owned land in New Scotland, New York; a rural town in central Albany County at the foot of the Helderberg Mountains. In 1907, a rundown farm was gifted to Rev. Adelbert Clarence Youmans by a wealthy member of the church where he had served as minister in Albany, New York. Little is known about the earlier history of the farm. An 1854 map of Albany County shows it occupied by a J. Waine prior to the introduction of the West Shore Railroad line which bisected the two farms that would eventually comprise Youmans Farms. They were located along an unpaved road that would be formally named Youmans Road in the late 1940's connecting out to New Scotland Rd (Route 85). Rev. A.C. Youmans and his wife Della resided at the farm for four years before they moved to Freehold, NY to resume his ministry. His second youngest son, Lester Howard Youmans, Sr. dropped out of high school at age 16 in 1914 and returned to the farm to work full-time and establish a retail dairy business. Lester Youmans, Sr. married Ethel Cozine and had four sons: Lester, Jr., Samuel, Donald, and James. 

In 1924, Lester Youmans, Sr. started a commercial dairy business. He established a daily milk and egg route in Albany and the suburbs. In 1928, Lester Youmans purchased the Hallenbeck Farm, known as the 'upper farm' (shown in the banner above) on the opposite side of the railroad from the original farm. In the 1930's and 1940's, four or five other farms were rented for about one dollar an acre to provide hay, corn and grain for the cows, chickens, and horses. In all, about 600 acres were worked.

Ethel died in 1934, leaving Lester, Sr. with three young sons to raise. He married Margaret Morrow and continued to operate the farm despite fighting diabetes. Rev. A.C. Youmans and his wife Della returned to the farm in 1936. A.C. Youmans served as a supply pastor at the New Scotland Presbyterian Church where Lester, Sr. had sung in the choir for years and where Ethel had played the piano and the organ.

In 1941, after attending the N.Y. State School of Agriculture and Home Economics at Cobleskill, N.Y. for two years, Lester's second son Sam returned to work on the farm. Lester Sr's younger brother Clarence also worked on the farm for some time. When World War II broke out, Lester, Jr. and Donald went off to war, leaving Sam to help keep the farm going. Many of the hired farm hands took higher paying jobs in military defense plants. After the war, Lester, Jr. and his wife Pauline lived on the farm for a while as did Donald and his wife Harriet.

At some point, Lester and Margaret purchased the Hungerford Farm up on the Helderberg Mountain and had some dairy cows up there. They cut hay on that farm to supplant the needs of the herd on the Youmans Farms.

Lester, Sr. was one of the very first persons in Albany County, NY to participate in the Heifer Project (Heifer International) which was begun in 1944. He donated bred heifers that were shipped off to Africa to give birth to calves and thereby build herds in Third World countries.

Eventually, the retail milk business was sold to Three Farms Dairy, a large dairy in the Albany area. In November 1954, two years after Lester Youmans, Sr. had passed away, Youmans Farms was auctioned by Lester's second wife Margaret Marrow to Van Zetten Bros (Jacob and Peter Van Zetten), well-known dairymen of nearby New Salem, NY. A newspaper account of the farm sale appearing in the Altamont Enterprise noted that Lester Youmans was a pioneer in soil conservation and that the farm was one of the best in all of Albany County at that time.

After the Youmans Farm was sold, Lester's second son, Samuel purchased about 20 acres of the Davis Farm adjacent to the former family farm and constructed a home in 1955 for his growing family, including one daughter Donna, and three sons; David, James, and Timothy. For a brief time, he and his wife Kathryn ('Kay') kept chickens in one of the brooder chicken coops that he moved through the woods from the farm. He allowed local farmers to cut hay and plant corn on some of the fields that he owned. An old summer cottage that Lester Youmans had constructed in the woods in the mid-1930's to be further away from the trains and other noises on the dairy farm stood vacant for many years before collapsing in the 1970's.

Sam and Kay Youmans were very active in the New Scotland community. Much of their involvement centered around the New Scotland Presbyterian Church where both had served as officers and where Kay taught Sunday School and prepared many church suppers. She also cooked for the local Kiwanis Club meetings every week. They were also very involved as charter members of the New Scotland Historical Society and eventually the Senior Citizens organization. Kay was designated as New Scotland Citizen of the Year in 1987. Kay passed away in 2001 and her remains are buried in the New Scotland Cemetery where three generations of the Youmans family are buried. She had served as Secretary for the Cemetery Association for many years. Her son David is now an officer is that organization.

Sam Youmans purchased the former church parsonage at the intersection of Routes 85 and 85A in 1958 and converted it into a two-unit apartment building. He sold the property in 1997. It is now in commercial use.

Lester, Jr., Sam, and Don Youmans as well as Sam's daughter Donna all attended school in the structure that now serves as the New Scotland Town Hall. Youmans Farms supplied milk to the school on a daily basis.

Samuel Youmans lived in New Scotland most of his life. In later life, he moved to an apartment in Voorheesville, a village within the Town of New Scotland. In 2005, he sold the house that he had lived in for about 50 years to his grandson Gregory Youmans, the son of Samuel's oldest son David Youmans. Later he sold his grandson about 17 acres of fields and woodland near that house. No Youmans Family members have lived on Youmans Rd since April of 1955 when Sam and Kay Youmans and their first two children moved out of the farmhouse on the north side of the railroad that they had leased from the Van Zetten brothers for a few months before their new house was ready to move in to. Today, Greg Youmans and his wife Lisa and their two children live in an enlarged version of the house that his grandfather built.