E. S. Young

DMOND STAFFORD YOUNG, deceased, one of the ablest members of the Dayton bar, and one of the most prominent citizens of that city, was born at Lyme, N. H., on February 28, 1827, and was the son of George Murray Young and Sibel (Green) Young.

He was of Scotch-Irish descent, his grandfather, Dr. Hugh Murray Young, having been an early Irish emigrant to Connecticut.

His father, George Murray Young, was born in Litchfield county, Conn., on April 1, 1802. He was educated at Exeter and Poughkeepsie academies, and then, learning the trade of a printer, carried on business for a time as a printer and publisher. In 1836 he married Sibel Green, daughter of Benjamin Green, of Lyme, N. H., and granddaughter of Col. Ebenezer Green, a Revolutionary soldier.

In 1835 he moved with his family to Ohio, and located at Newark, where for ten years he was extensively engaged in mercantile purrk suits. In 1845 he went to Cincinnati, where for six years he carried on the produce and commission business. He came to Dayton in 1851. He was elected mayor of this city in 1854, and re-elected in 1855, and was subsequently appointed United States commissioner, an office which he held until his death. His wife died in Dayton in 1865.

He was grand worthy patriarch of the Sons of Temperance, when that order numbered 30,000 in Ohio. In politics he was a whig, and subsequently a republican. During the war he was a stanch Union man. He was a prominent member of the Presbyterian church, and was at all times, and in whatever community he resided, honored and respected for his integrity and strength of character. He died at Dayton on August 30, 1878.

Edmond Stafford Young attended college at Granville, Ohio, and afterward at Cincinnati, graduating from Farmers (afterwards Belmont) college near that city in 1845.

At the latter institution he had among his school-mates ex-President Benjamin Harrison, Murat Halstead, and Hon. L. B. Gunckel, and the late Judge Henderson Elliott, of Dayton. He read law in the office of W. J. McKinney, of Dayton, and after a term of service in the office of the clerk of the court of Montgomery county, Ohio, graduated from the Cincinnati Law school, and was admitted to the bar in the year 1853.

Mr. Young’s professional partners were, successively, George W. Brown, Hon. D. A. Houk and Oscar M. Gottschall, with the latter of whom his partnership continued from 1866 until 1879. In 1878 his eldest son, George R. Young, was admitted to the firm, which, under the name of Young, Gottschall & Young, continued until the year 1879, when Mr. Gottschall retired. Mr. Young and his son remained together in the practice under the firm name of Young & Young until his death in 1 888.

In September, 1856, at Philadelphia, Pa., Mr. Young married Sarah B. Dechert, daughter of Elijah Dechert, a prominent lawyer of Reading, Pa., and granddaughter of Judge Robert Porter of that city.

Her mother, Mary Porter, was descended from Robert Porter, a native of Ireland, who landed at Londonderry, N. H., and afterwards purchased a farm in Montgomery county, Pa.r where he took up his permanent residence. His most successful and prominent son (Mrs.. Dechert’s grandfather) was Gen. Andrew Porter, who was born September 24, 1743, and served with distinction as an officer during; the Revolutionary war. After its close hewas commissioned major-general of militia ini Pennsylvania, and was tendered the position of secretary of war by President Madison, but declined. His son, Judge Robert Porter, of Reading, Pa., was born January 10, 1768, and served during the latter part of the war of the Revolution as a lieutenant of artillery. Having entered the army with his father when but eleven years of age, he was perhaps the youngest soldier and officer of the war.

In 1789 he was admitted to the bar at Philadelphia, and was afterwards appointed president judge of the Third judicial district of Pennsylvania, a position which he filled for over twenty-five years, when he resigned and retired to private life. Edmond S. Young was a strong Union man and an earnest supporter of President Lincoln’s administration. He was appointed by Gov. Brough commissioner of the draft for Montgomery county, and made the largest draft of any in the state. He also served as a member of the military committee, and was identified with the organization of all the local companies raised in Dayton and its vicinity. He devoted much time and labor to the cause, and through his out-spoken and uncompromising efforts, wa: *ften exposed to much personal danger.

Mr. Young was a member of the first nonpartisan police board of Dayton, appointed in 1873, by which the present metropolitan police system of that city was inaugurated. He was also one of the founders of the Dayton Bar association, now known as the Dayton Law Library association.

During the course of his practice he was frequently urged to accept a judicial position, but declined. Upon the death of Judge W. W. Johnson in 1886 he was asked to become a candidate for his unexpired term upon the supreme bench; and without his knowledge a petition for his appointment, signed by the entire Dayton bar, was presented to Gov. Foraker. Learning of the movement, however, Mr. Young, for personal reasons, declined to permit the use of his name.

He was a member of the Ohio State Bar association, and also of the American Bar association, and from a biographical sketch of him, which appears in the published proceedings of the latter organization, for the year 1888, we select the following extract, which is truthfully descriptive of him, both as a lawyer and as a citizen:

Mr. Young was a man of striking physical appearance, and of marked mental characteristics. He was born to be a lawyer. His breadth of intellect, his strong, determined will, his sound, impartial judgment, his remarkable reasoning powers, his gift of nice and correct discrimination, made up a mental organization distinctively legal, while, at the same time, his large and well proportioned head, with its high, expansive forehead, set firmly on his broad, square shoulders, gave him a personal appearance in keeping with his mental characteristics.

He was a strong and pure type of that class of American lawyers, who, eschewing outside schemes for the promotion of wealth or personal aggrandizement, devote to their profession the full measure of their powers, and seek happiness in the conscientious discharge of their professional, domestic and civic duties.

He died suddenly on the evening of February 14, 1888, while still in the active practice of his profession, leaving his widow, two sons, and one daughter, Mary (since deceased), surviving.

As printed in Centennial portrait and biographical record of the city of Dayton and of Montgomery County, Ohio, containing biographical sketches of prominent and representative citizens, together with the biographi (1897). See the original pages. Wording is the original; obvious scanning errors have been corrected, and a few may remain.