Lawrence D. Yeomans Papers
A native of Ontario, Lawrence D. Yeomans was working in New York when he volunteered for service in the U.S. Army Signal Corps during the First World War. For eighteen months, Yeomans served as a chauffeur with the Signal Corps in France, driving senior officers around Paris and to and from the front.
This small collection documents Lawrence Yeomans’ time as a chauffeur with the Signal Corps during the First World War. In addition to a handful of official documents relating to his service, Yeomans held onto a few pieces of ephemera as souvenirs, some postcards, and a set of photographs, including three depicting him in uniform and ten showing a display of German war material confiscated at war’s end.
Background on Lawrence D. Yeomans
Lawrence Drummond Yeomans was born in Mount Forest, Ontario, on Oct. 28, 1896, the first child of Emma Christina Westervelt and Dr. Alfred George Yeomans. As a young man, Yeomans relocated to the United States and was taking classes in mechanical drawing at the Pratt Institute and working at Westinghouse Electric in New York City when his adopted country was drawn into the First World War.
Taking a leave of absence from work in September 1917, Yeomans volunteered for duty with the Signal Corps and was assigned to Co. C, 309 Field Signal Battalion, arriving in France early in November. For the next eighteen months, he worked as a chauffeur, driving high ranking officers around Paris and to and from the front. After being honorably discharged on May 15, 1919, Yeomans returned to civilian life. He died in Morristown, N.J., in February 12, 1971.
This small collections documents Lawrence Yeomans’ time as a chauffeur with the Signal Corps during the First World War. In addition to a handful of official documents relating to his service, Yeomans held onto a few pieces of ephemera as souvenirs, some postcards, and a set of photographs, including three depicting him in uniform and ten showing a display of German war materiel confiscated at war’s end. The correspondence in the collection is slight, nearly entirely post-war, and related to Yeomans’ family.
Gift of Leslie Button, June 2015.
Selected content is available online through SCUA’s digital repository Credo
Processed by I. Eliot Wentworth, July 2015.
)Cite as: Lawrence D. Yeomans Papers (MS 873). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.