Arthur Young (accountant)

Young was born on 17 December 1863 in Scotland. He was the son of a Glasgow merchant and shipowner. His nephew, Sir Arthur Young, was a Member of Parliament and former Chamberlain of the King's Household.[1]

He was educated at the University of Glasgow where he studied law, was the captain of the University rugby team and played for Glasgow in an inter-city rugby match. He graduated MA in 1883 and LLB in 1887.[2]

He apprenticed with Glasgow solicitors A. J. & A. Graham before moving to the United States in 1890.[3] In 1894, he began the practice of public accounting in Chicago with C. W. Stuart under the firm name Stuart & Young. In 1903, he helped secure the passage of the first C.P.A. law in Illinois and later served as president of the Illinois Society of Certified Public Accountants.[1]

In 1906, he bought out Stuart's interest in the firm and together with his brother Stanley Young, founded the accountancy firm Arthur Young & Co. in Chicago.[4] In 1924 Young innovated by forging an international network with Broads Paterson & Co in the UK.[3] He retired shortly after that and died in 1948.[2]

In 1917, he moved from Chicago to New York City, where he resided at 815 Park Avenue on Manhattan's Upper East Side. In 1927, he purchased "Crossways," a pre-1860 Late Victorian-style residence on South Boundary Street in Aiken, South Carolina from Dr. H. J. Ray for $40,000. The home was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1997.[5]

Young, who never married, was "remembered in a social setting for his loose fitting tweed clothes from Whitaker & Company in London, pipe smoking and martinis, elaborate meals at Aiken with his cook Margaret Beckford, and his many dogs."[6] He died at his residence in Aiken on 3 April 1948.[1] He was buried at Bethany Cemetery in Aiken.[5]

His memoirs, entitled Arthur Young and the Business he Founded, were privately printed in 1948 by J. C. Burton and published by Merrymount Press in Boston.[6]

• Robert Arthur Young at Find a Grave