Page:The Biographical Dictionary of America, vol. 10.djvu/498

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YOUNG


YOUNG


founders of Nauvoo, 111., to which city a charter was crraiited practically independent of the state government. He visited England in 1840, and after the death of Joseph Smith, became leader of the apostles. Aug. 8, 1844. and also lieutenant- general of the Nauvoo legion. Tlie cliarter of Nauvoo having been revoked, temporary head- quarters were set up in 1846, at Council Bluffs, Io\v:i, and in other places, and in the spring of 1847. with a company of 143, Young went in search of a new home for liis people, founding •' Great Salt Lake City." Utah, which became the "center stake," so-called, of the Mormons. He was chosen to the first presidency, Dec. 27, 1847 ; elected temporary governor, March 12. 1849, and after the establishing of Utah as a territory, be- came, Feb. 3, 1851, governor, commander-in-chief of militia, and superintendent of Indian affairs. The doctrine of polygamy was publicly preached and practised from 1852. being in that year first declared by Young a tenet of the Mormon church. In 1862 a statute was enacted by the U.S. con- gress forbidding its practice, but the la%v was but weakly enforced, the Mormons successfully resist- ing the courts until 1882. In 1862, and again in 1872. Young was indicted for polygamy, but each time his case was dismissed. In addition to his administration of the church, he was also actively interested iu the industrial and commercial wel- fare of the settlement, systemizingits methods of trade, agriculture and manufacture, and pro- moting the construction of telegraph and postal lines. He also designed and superintended the building of the great temple at Salt Lake city, and several other Mormon temples, and founded the Brigham Young academy, and the College of Logan. The various accounts of Mormonism in- clude : "The Mormons in the Valley of the Great Salt Lake " by Lieut. John "W, Gunnison (1852): "Utah and the Mormons," by Benjamin G. Ferris (1856); "Mormonism : its Leaders and Designs, " by John Hyde, Jr. (1857); " History of Salt Lake City " (1887). Brigham Young died in Salt Lake city, Utah, Aug. 29, 1877.

YOUNG, Charles Augustus, astronomer, was born in Hanover, N.H., Dec. 15, 1834; son of Prof. Ira and Eliza (Adams) Young; grandson of Samuel and Rebecca (Burnham) Young and of Prof. Ebenezer and Benlah(Minot) Adams, and a descendant of Sir John Young, one of the six original grantees of the Massachusetts north coast from Boston to Cape Ann, in 1627, and Ephraim Adams of New Ispwich, N.H. He was graduated from Dartmouth, A.B., 1853, A.M., 1856 : was a teacher of the classics in Phillips Andover academy, 1853-56, and professor of mathematics and physics at Western Reserve college, Ohio, 1856-66, serving as captain of com- pany B,, 85th Ohio volunteers, 1862. He was


married, Aug. 26, 1857, to Augusta Spring, daughter of Charles and Eliza (Morrill) Mixer of Biddeford, Maine. He was Appleton professor of natural philosophy and professor of astronomy at Dartmouth, 1866-77, and in the latter year be- came professor of astronomy in Princeton univer- sity (tlien the College of New Jersey), a position he still held in 1903. While in charge of the spec- troscopic observations of the astronomical party sent to observe the total solar eclipse at Burling- ton, Iowa, Aug. 7, 1869, Professor Young dis- covered the spectrum of the corona, and while on a similar expedition at Jerez, Spain, in 1870, made the important discovery of the " reversing layer " of the solar atmosphere, for which he was awarded the Janssen medal of the French Acad- emy of Sciences. He also made other valuable observations in his special field of solar phj'sics, observing the transits of Venus at Sherman, Wyoming, 1872 ; at Pekin, China, 1874. and at Princeton in 1882, and was in charge of the Princeton astronomical expeditions to observe the eclipse of July 29, 1878 ; that of August. 1887, and of May, 1900. Among liis scientific inven- tions is a new form of automatic spectroscope which came into general use in 1875. and a de- tached gravity escapement for astronomical clocks in 1877. He received the honorary degree of Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania, 1870, and from Hamilton. 1871 : and that of LL.D. from Wesleyan, 1870, from Columbia, 1887, and Western Reserve, 1894. He was made an as- sociate fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1871 ; a foreign associate of the Royal Astronomical Society of Great Britain in 1872 ; a member of the National Academy of Sciences, 1872 ; served as vice-president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1876. and as president, 1883, and was- made a member of numerous other scientific academies and societies, American and foreign. In addition to several hundred addresses and lec- tures on astronomical subjects, and astronomical articles in scientific and popular ])eriodicals, he is the author of : The Sun in the " International Scientific Series" (1882); A Text Book of Gen- eral Astronomy (1888): Elements of Astronomi/ and Ureangraphy (1890) ; Lessons in Astronomy (1891). and Mminal of Astronomy (1902).

YOUNQ, James Rankin, rejiresentative, was born in Philadt.-lpina, Pa., March 10, 1847 : son of George Rankin and Eliza (Rankin) Young ; and a brother of John Russell Young (q. v.). Heat- tended the public schools of Philadelphia, and the Central High school. 1862-63 : enliste<l as a pri- vate in the 32d Pennsylvania infantry in June, 1863, and served in Gen. William F. Smith's di- vision in the Gettysburg campaign. In 1866, he made a six months' tour of the south, writing ar-