Thomas Young (February 19, 1731 – June 24, 1777) was doctor, philosopher and a member of the

Boston Committee of Correspondence The committees of correspondence were, prior to the outbreak of the American Revolutionary War, a collection of American political organizations that sought to coordinate opposition to British Parliament and, later, support for American independe ...

and an organizer of the

Boston Tea Party The Boston Tea Party was an American political and mercantile protest by the Sons of Liberty in Boston, Massachusetts, on December 16, 1773. The target was the Tea Act of May 10, 1773, which allowed the British East India Company to sell t ...

. Young was a mentor and teacher to Ethan Allen.

Early life and activities

Thomas Young was born February 19, 1731, in Little Britain in

New Windsor, New York New Windsor is a town in Orange County, New York, United States. History The region was originally inhabited by the Munsee The Munsee (or Minsi or Muncee) or mə́n'si·w ( del, Monsiyok)Online Lenape Talking Dictionary, "Munsee Indians"L ...

. He was the son of first cousins John and Mary Crawford Young. John Young emigrated from Ireland to America in 1729 with a group led by Charles Clinton of County Longford. Charles Clinton, John Young, and Mary Crawford Young were all second cousins through their grandparents, siblings

James Clinton Major General James Clinton (August 9, 1736 – September 22, 1812) was an American Revolutionary War officer who, with John Sullivan, led in 1779 the Sullivan Expedition in what is now western New York to attack British-allied Seneca and ...

(1667-1718) and Margaret Clinton Parks (1650-1710). The Clintons, Youngs, and Crawfords shared a distant grandmother,

Elizabeth Blount Elizabeth Blount (// – 1540), commonly known during her lifetime as Bessie Blount, was a mistress of Henry VIII of England. Early life Blount was the daughter of Sir John Blount and Catherine Pershall, of Kinlet, Bridgnorth, Shropshire. Si ...

mistress of King Henry the VIII and mother of the king's son Henry FitzRoy. As Covenanters, the Clinton family had escaped from Scotland to Ireland in the seventeenth century ('' New York Genealogical and Biographical Record'' 1882, Vol. 12: p. 193). Although Charles Clinton and John Young had emigrated from Ireland with the intention of settling in

Pennsylvania Pennsylvania (; ( Pennsylvania Dutch: )), officially the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, is a state spanning the Mid-Atlantic, Northeastern, Appalachian, and Great Lakes regions of the United States. It borders Delaware to its southeast, ...

, near a group of fellow-Covenanters, their chartered ship, the ''George and Anne'', was taken off-course by an unscrupulous captain who held Clinton and Young captive until they paid a ransom. During their captivity, most of their fellow passengers perished of small-pox, starvation, or ship fever. Finding themselves in

Boston Boston (), officially the City of Boston, is the state capital and most populous city of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as well as the cultural and financial center of the New England region of the United States. It is the 24th- mo ...

after this ordeal, within a year Young and Clinton made their way to Little Britain. It is unclear when Mary Crawford joined them in Little Britain or whether she was among the passengers of the ''George and Anne'', although it seems likely that she emigrated with her cousins ('' New York Genealogical and Biographical Record'' 1882, Vol. 13, p. 882). A biographical sketch of Charles Clinton describes Little Britain thus: "after investigation,

harles Clinton Gottlieb Christoph Harless (originally Harles) (21 June 1738 – 2 November 1815) was a German classical scholar and bibliographer. Biography He was born at Culmbach in Bavaria. He studied at the universities of Halle, Erlangen and Jena. In 1 ...

settled at a place designated (for town purposes until 1763) as 'the precinct of the highlands.' It is embraced in modern Orange County, but until after the Revolutionary War it was in Ulster County. His neighborhood was called Little Britain. James Kennedy, a New York merchant . . . James Alexander, a New York lawyer and member of the Governor's council, and his co-partner, William Smith, had before secured grants of land in the precinct of the highlands. It was border-land toward the Indians, west of the Hudson, not yet settled by white men. It was without habitations, except Indian huts, and without roads, except Indian trails. So late as about 1845, more than one hundred years after this settlement, a living occupant could describe the appearance of one hundred wigwams on the side hills within sight of her father's house (Eager, p. 619)" (ibid.). Thomas Young's parents settled in farmland adjoining the Clintons, and here Thomas Young was born soon after the group's arrival in Little Britain. After demonstrating much intellectual brilliance as a child, Thomas Young was apprenticed to a local physician and then began his own medical practice in Amenia in Dutchess County in 1753. In 1755, he married Mary Winegar of

Litchfield, Connecticut Litchfield is a town in and former county seat of Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. The population was 8,192 at the 2020 census. The boroughs of Bantam and Litchfield are located within the town. There are also three unincorpora ...

. They had two sons and four daughters.Bielinski, Stefan. "Thomas Young", New York State Museum
nysm.nysed.gov; accessed January 10, 2016. In August 1758 Young was indicted in the Crum Elbow Precinct of

Dutchess County, New York Dutchess County is a county in the U.S. state of New York. As of the 2020 census, the population was 295,911. The county seat is the city of Poughkeepsie. The county was created in 1683, one of New York's first twelve counties, and later or ...

, for speaking and publishing "blasphemous words" concerning the Christian religion. Young met the young Ethan Allen while Allen was living in

Salisbury, Connecticut Salisbury () is a town situated in Litchfield County, Connecticut, United States. The town is the northwesternmost in the state of Connecticut; the Massachusetts-New York-Connecticut tri-state marker is located at the northwest corner of the town ...

, and Young was practicing medicine just across the provincial boundary in Amenia, New York. Only five years older than Allen, Young taught the younger Allen a great deal about philosophy and political theory. Young and Allen eventually decided to collaborate on a book intended to be an attack on organized religion, as Young had convinced Allen to become a

Deist Deism ( or ; derived from the Latin '' deus'', meaning "god") is the philosophical position and rationalistic theology that generally rejects revelation as a source of divine knowledge, and asserts that empirical reason and observation ...

. They worked on the manuscript until 1764, when Young moved away from the area, taking the manuscript with him. They also shared an interest in ingrafting, an early form of inoculation, particularly in relation to smallpox. Ingrafting was considered a heresy by New England clergy and punishable by law, if not conducted with the consent of the town selectman. In 1764, Allen insisted that Young inject him with the virus on the Salisbury meeting house steps to prove whether or not ingrafting worked. They did this on a Sunday. Allen did not suffer from the virus, but when news of what they had done spread Allen was hauled into court for a blasphemous response to the investigating official. In October 1764, Young moved to Albany to establish a medical practice. While there his son Rasman was baptized at the Lutheran Church. Young invested in a real estate venture with [John Henry Lydius, which subsequently failed. Young became involved in the resistance movement in Albany in the 1760s and helped found the Sons of Liberty there."Thomas Young" profile
gilderlehrman.org; accessed January 10, 2016.

Boston

Young arrived in Boston in 1765 and became a family physician to John Adams. He was active in the city’s Committee of Correspondence and became a committeeman for the Sons of Liberty. In 1773 Philadelphia physician Benjamin Rush and member of the Sons of Liberty authored a diatribe inveighing against British Tea and its harmful properties, both physical and political. It was quickly reprinted in Boston, where Young had already spoke out in a similar vein in a letter to the ''Boston Evening Post'' of October 25. Young is considered to be one of the active organizers of the Boston Tea Party although he himself did not actually participate in the destruction of the tea chests. At the time he was addressing a crowd at the Old South Meeting House on the negative health effects of tea drinking. According to the Boston Tea Party Museum, this was probably a diversion intended to help the Tea Party organizers by keeping the crowd in the Meeting House while the tea was being destroyed.

Philadelphia

In 1774 Young, having received death threats (although for his political or religious views is unclear) left Boston for Newport. In 1775, he moved to Philadelphia and helped frame Pennsylvania Constitution of 1776, the state constitution, the most democratic constitution among the original states. Young also suggested the name of

Vermont Vermont () is a state in the northeast New England region of the United States. Vermont is bordered by the states of Massachusetts to the south, New Hampshire to the east, and New York to the west, and the Canadian province of Quebec to ...

for the new state north of Massachusetts, which was originally called New Connecticut. The reasoning in his letter to the Vermont Constitutional Convention in 1777 was that most of Vermont was in the

Green Mountains The Green Mountains are a mountain range in the U.S. state of Vermont. The range runs primarily south to north and extends approximately from the border with Massachusetts to the border with Quebec, Canada. The part of the same range that is i ...

, said to have been named by Samuel de Champlain. Young chose to combine "vert" (green) with "mont" (mountain) to honor the

Green Mountain Boys The Green Mountain Boys were a militia organization first established in 1770 in the territory between the British provinces of New York and New Hampshire, known as the New Hampshire Grants and later in 1777 as the Vermont Republic (which late ...

. Young named several communities in New York state, including Amenia. Young died in Philadelphia on June 24, 1777, aged 46.

Deism

In 1772 Young published a deist statement of beliefs in a Boston newspaper.

Works

* ''A Poem to the Memory of James Wolfe ... Who was slain upon the Plains of Abraham'', (1761) * ''Reflections on the Disputes Between New York, New Hampshire and Col. John Henry Lydius'' in which he railed against land speculators and the New York aristocracy. (1764) * ''Reason: the Only Oracle of Man'' - with Ethan Allen (published posthumously by Allen 1785)Holbrook, Stewart H. ''Ethan Allen'', New York: The MacMillan Company. (1940), , pp. 194–195,225

References

External links

Letter from Thomas Young to Hugh Hughes, 21 December, 1772", The Massachusetts Historical Society

"A Short History of the Boston Tea Party", Old South Meeting House

Reason and Revolution: The Radicalism of Dr. Thomas Young
P. Maier, American Quarterly, 1976.

Matthew Stewart, Politico, 1 September 2014.
No, the Original Tea Partier Was Not an ‘Atheist’
Charles C.W. Cooke, National Review Online, 3 September 2014.
{{DEFAULTSORT:Young, Thomas 1731 births 1777 deaths American tax resisters American deists People of Massachusetts in the American Revolution People from colonial Boston Physicians in the American Revolution People of colonial Massachusetts People from New Windsor, New York People of the Province of New York