Thursday 2 October 2014

The Reverend Dr.George Young) July 15, 1777 – May 8, 1848

Reverend Dr. George Young
Note  - this is still a work in progress)

The Reverend Dr. Young was listed in George Markham Tweddell's Bards and Authors of Cleveland and South Durham 1872 as being earmarked for a 2nd or 3rd volume of the book. Only the first volume was published. There is no further information in Bards and Authors but Dr Young was mentioned and quoted by Tweddell in his Middlesbrough History from Bulmer's History and Directory of North Yorkshire. Further down he quotes the Reverend George Young and so i'm assuming they are one and the same. He quotes both as being Antiquary.

George young -
The Wiki link tells us that George Young (a Presbyterian minister) "was born southwest of Edinburgh in Kirk Newton to John Young and his wife Jean. George was born without a left hand and this led his parents to educate him for the ministry. He was a Scottish divine, scholar and geologist.

At the University of Edinburgh he distinguished himself in mathematics and natural philosophy. He was a favourite student of Professor John Playfair who was, at that time, becoming the great promoter of James Hutton's uniformitarian geology. After receiving high honors upon completion of his degree in 1796, he studied theology under Dr. George Lawson at Selkirk for five years, receiving at the end of this period a licence to preach from the Presbytery of Glasgow. In 1806 he became the pastor of the Cliff Street chapel in Whitby where he served for 42 years. He obtained an M.A. from the University of Edinburgh in 1819. In 1826 he married Margaret Hunter. Though married for 20 years they had no children.

Young could read and write in several languages and developed his own shorthand, which is still undecipherable. He helped established the Whitby Museum as first secretary and founding member of the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society. He procured fossil and mineral collections for the Yorkshire Philosophical Society. Young wrote 22 books on many topics. He wrote on the history of Whitby, on the great solar eclipse of 1836, an acclaimed biography of Captain James Cook, the downfall of Napoleon and a catalog of hardy garden plants. He also edited the Whitby Panorama. In 1817 he published a two volume "History of Whitby and Streoneshalh Abbey": there was a list of subscribers who before publication subscribed for more than 840 copies. With the help of his artist friend, John Bird, then a teacher of drawing in Whitby, he published a "Geological Survey of the Yorkshire Coast". Young published a smaller volume of history in 1824 entitled "A picture of Whitby and its environs". The new discoveries in Geology prompted Young to write "Scriptural Geology" in 1838 in which he attempted to reconcile Geology and the teachings of the Bible.

As well as his published works, George Young was instrumental in establishing both the Whitby Botanic Garden (1812) and the Whitby Literary and Philosophical Society (1823). He became one of the two secretaries of the Society and remained so until his death in 1848.

Final days

On the 8th of May, 1848 Rev. George Young passed away following a bout of influenza. He was buried in St. Mary's Churchyard, the ceremony being performed by his friend Dr William Scoresby junior, "amidst a grief so deep and general as to show that Whitby had lost a great benefactor". http://www.whitbymuseum.org.uk/personalities/young.htm



(1890) http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/eng/YKS/NRY/Middlesbrough/Middlesbrough90.html

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"In the autumn of 686 - only fifty-eight years after Paulinus had introduced Christianity into Yorkshire, which had given to the poor slaves rest on one day in every seven, which, on being refused by their masters, was to entitle them to their entire freedom - the aged St. Cuthbert, as Bishop of Lindisfarne, dedicated a church, which Dr. Young conjectures to have been at Middlesbrough, for the Princess Ælfleda, "the daughter of an illustrious monarch, the granddaughter of one still more famous, the sister of three kings, and of two queens," then the pious Abbess of Streoneshalh (Whitby), where her mother, Queen Eanfleda, had resided with her since the death of King Oswy, in 670. If Young's conjecture be correct - and he was a careful and skilful antiquary - who can say that Middlesbrough has no ancient history?

The church which Cuthbert consecrated, whether it had before been a pagan temple or was newly erected, would be of timber, or with wattled walls, like the wicker-work of a basket, and roofed with reeds; and the palaces of our kings were then the same; for the art of architecture, which the Romans had introduced, was lost, and our rude Anglo-Saxon ancestors were incompetent to produce permanent buildings, and even too barbarous to preserve those they found on their arrival. Not one of those noble castles and monasteries which for centuries have been in ruins, amongst whose mouldering stones generation after generation have so delighted to meditate, had then been erected. Where Westminster Abbey and Hall and the Houses of Parliament now stand, was then a miserable marsh, overgrown with thorns and briars, quite in the country. On the site of York Minster, was a plain wooden oratory; and on that of Durham Cathedral, sheep and cattle were quietly grazing; and not one of those fine cathedrals which now beautify the land - dearest of all to the true Freemason as "poems in stone" from the active brains and lissom fingers of his ancient operative brethren - had been begun. We know with certainty that, shortly after the Conquest, there was a church here, dedicated to Ælfieda's tutor from early infancy, and predecessor as abbess, the Lady Hilda, which Robert de Brus the Second, Agnes, daughter of Fulk Pagnell, his wife, and their son and heir, Adam de Brus, having founded and richly endowed a Priory of Augustine Canons at Guisborough in 1119, about the same time, presented to the Benedictine Abbey of Whitby, endowing it with evidently the same carucate of land there which we have just seen Robert Mallett holding of the Brus fee, and with two carucates and two oxgangs of land in Newham, on condition that as many monks from the abbey as the income would maintain should reside at Middlesbrough, to pray for the souls of the founders for ever, and those of their ancestors and heirs. This charter was confirmed to the abbey in 1130 - shortly before the abbeys of Rievaulx, Fountains, Byland, or Kirkstall were founded - by Archbishop Thurstan; and Middlesbrough was ordered "to be a cell for their monks, free and clear from every episcopal usuage." Other endowments followed apace, at Acklam, Airsome, Cargo Fleet (then called Caldecotes, or the cold cottages), Coleby, Linthorpe, Marton, Middlesbrough, Ormesby, Thornaby, and Tolesby, from various benefactors, besides which the monks enjoyed the tithes of many other lands in the near neighbourhood of their cell. "This cell," says Dr. Young, "where twelve or more monks probably resided, had its own prior, who is named both in the register and in the rolls; and it had also its own compotus, distinct from that of the abbey."

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