Thomas Young
Thomas Young was born in Maryland in 1766. From there he went to Virginia, where, in about 1793, he married Mary Parker. The Youngs are of German descent, the Parkers of Irish extraction. Shortly after their marriage they moved to Kentucky, then to Hamilton County, Ohio, then to Montgomery County, where they lived a few years. then came to what is now Shelby County about 1808, and located on section 16, Orange Township, and took a lease on said school section. The land on which he settled had been previously settled on by Abram Cannon in 1806. It was here that Isaac Young was born March 17, 1810, he being the first white child born within the present limits of Orange Township. In 1832 he married Wilmuth Lucas. They have raised a family of five children, whose names and date of birth are as follows: Wallace, born 1833; Lydia, born 1840; Elizabeth, born 1842; Minerva, born 1844; and Naaman, born 1849. Mr. Young is now the oldest settler in the township, and perhaps in the county, who was born here; he having lived in the same township, and within one mile of the same place, for seventy-two years. He cast his first vote for President for Andrew Jackson, and has voted at every presidential election since that time; but after the first election he voted the Whig ticket until 1856, since which time he has been an unswerving Republican. Mr. Young has been a member of the United Brethren Church for over forty years. He has retired from active life, having accumulated a competence for the remainder of his life. He has always had the confidence and esteem of his neighbors; always doing as he would wish to be done by; never having had a lawsuit in his life. Mr. Young says he has bought corn at 8⅓ cents per bushel, and had six months’ time to pay for it. They sold wheat at 25 cents per bushel and hauled it to Piqua. To give the history of his commencement in life, his hardships and privations, would be but to repeat the old story, so often told. I will close by giving the manner they used to catch fish before they were able to buy twine to make seines. They would make what was called a brush drag or kind of seine made of brush, and woven together and supported by grape-vines. A sufiicient number of the neighbors would get together to handle one of these drags; they would sweep the river from one side to the other, and sometimes would catch barrels at one haul.
Naaman Young, son of Isaac Young, was born in Shelby County in 1849, and married Margaret J. Borton in 1879. They have two children, viz., Stanley D. and Mary D.
From History of Shelby County, Ohio; R. Sutton & Co, Philadelphia PA, 1883