Youngs Again

As I worked on my Youngs line for my Monday post, I ran into some, shall we say, misdirection in sources I found.  In the end I was feeling confident I had traced the line accurately, but it lacked the closure I like.

I had been concerned about the connection from David Youngs, my 5x great-grandfather back to the next generation.  Was his father John or was it Judge Benjamin?  And while I was at it, I wanted at least one more source showing my 4x great-grandfather, James, was David’s son.

So, instead of preparing a post on my Halsey line, I kept at my online search.  I had read that the most reliable source on Youngs genealogy was Youngs family : Vicar Christopher Yonges, his ancestors in England and his descendants in America : a history and genealogy by Seleh Youngs and published in 1907.  But I hadn’t been able to locate a digitized copy.  I wanted to make another attempt because I thought maybe it had been partially transcribed somewhere.  I don’t remember now how I discovered it on ancestry.com, but there it was—the whole book digitized.

It’s tempting to wish I had discovered it earlier in order to save a lot of effort.  But I found tons of transcribed records for the Youngs that I might not otherwise have added to my documentation.  And I learned a lot about the family in the process.

Oh, yes, sure enough, David’s father was John and his son, James, was the right James.  What surprised me was the volume of information about David.  He was a pastor of the Presbyterian Church of Setauket, Long Island and the book had eight pages devoted to him and included a facsimile of two handwritten pages of one of his sermons. 

The book also answered a lingering question I had.  David Youngs was born and died on Long Island.  How did James end up in New Jersey?  After David’s death, his wife Bethia married Judge Benjamin Halsey of Morristown, NJ and her four children grew up and were married there.  (There is a typo in the book—it has “Morristown, NY”, not NJ, but it is clear from the context, New Jersey is the intended state).


I also found a few unexpected nuggets of information.  James was in the state militia during the Revolution and his daughter Hannah settled in Schenectady, NY after her marriage to Joseph Hinds.  That last bit will hopefully lead to some clues about the Hinds family.

Up next, the Halsey family, not because Bethia married a Halsey after David’s death, but because James married his step-sister, Ruth Halsey!