Robert A. Young (minister)

Robert A. Young was born on January 23, 1824, in Campbell's Station, Knox County, Tennessee.[2][3] His father, Captain John C. Young, was a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and "a large farmer and slaveholder" in Knox County, Tennessee, who died when Young was only six years old.[2] He had two sisters and two brothers, including Robert R. Moore, another Methodist minister.[2]

His paternal grandfather, Henry Young, immigrated from England to the United States as a ship-carpenter, settling in Baltimore, Maryland.[2] His mother, Lucinda Hyder, was born in Carter County, Tennessee; her ancestors had immigrated to the United States from Germany.[2] His maternal grandfather, John Hyder, was "a large farmer" in Carter County, while his maternal uncle, Michael Hyder, served in the Tennessee legislature, representing the same county.[2]

Young was raised in a Presbyterian family,[2] but he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1842.[3] He graduated from Washington College, a Presbyterian college, in 1844.[2] One of his classmates was Zebulon Baird Vance, who later served as the Governor of North Carolina.[2] Young studied medicine briefly with a physician in Rheatown, Tennessee, but he decided to serve the Methodist Episcopal Church instead.[2] As a minister, he received a master of arts degree from Jackson College in 1850.[2] Additionally, he received a Doctor of Divinity from Florence Wesleyan University during the civil war.[2] He was the recipient of a Legum Doctor from Washington College in 1895.[3]

Young first became a minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in Dandridge, Tennessee in 1845.[2][3] He was recommended by Reverend Alexander Little Page Green to serve as minister for the Cumberland Iron Works from 1846 to 1848.[2][3] He became a deacon in 1848 and an elder in 1850.[3] He then served as minister in Columbia, Tennessee from 1848 to 1850, and in Huntsville, Alabama from 1850 to 1852.[2][3] He turned down the offer to serve as President of the Florence Wesleyan University (a precursor to the University of North Alabama in 1852, and served as a minister in Lebanon, Tennessee for one year and in St. Louis, Missouri for two more years instead.[2][3] He served as an elder of the St. Louis district of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South from 1855 to 1857, when he became presiding elder of its Lexington District until 1860.[2] He briefly served as minister in Lebanon, Tennessee in the fall of 1860.[2]

During the American Civil War, Young was a staunch supporter of the Confederate States of America.[2] He served as the President of Florence Wesleyan University in Florence, Alabama from 1861 to 1864.[2][3] He was a minister in Columbia, Tennessee in 1864 until he became minister of the Tulip Street Methodist Church in Edgefield, now East Nashville, in 1865.[2][3] He served as the minister of McKendree Methodist Church from 1866 to 1870.[3]

In the late 1860s, Young was the author of A Reply to Ariel, an essay about the ethnology of blacks.[2] The essay was a response to a racist text entitled The Negro, authored by Buckner H. Payne under the pseudonym of "Ariel,"[4] which suggested blacks harked back to Eve's affair with a "subhuman beast" (sic).[5] Even though Young "unashamedly admitted to anti-black prejudices" and failed to believe in the "social equality of the Negro," Young offered a scientific criticism suggesting there was only one human species regardless of skin color, citing Carl Linnaeus, George S. Blackie and Louis Agassiz.[1]

Young served as the minister of Elm Street Methodist Church from 1870 to 1874.[2][3] He was the editor of Advocates of Mission, a Methodist publication.[3] Additionally, he served on the book committee of the Southern Methodist Publishing House.[3]

Young served as the Financial Secretary of the Board of Trust of Vanderbilt University from its founding in 1874 to 1882.[2][3][6] He continued to serve on its Board until 1902.[3] He also served on the Board of Trust of the Nashville College for Young Ladies, and on the Nashville Board of Education for three years.[2][3]

Young served on the board of directors of the American National Bank of Nashville.[2]

Young married Mary A. Kemmer, a native of Bledsoe County, Tennessee, in June 1847.[2][3] After she died in 1879, he married Anna Green Hunter, the daughter of Reverend Alexander Little Page Green, on August 18, 1880 in Nashville.[2][3] By his second marriage, he had a stepson, Alexander Green Hunter, and two stepdaughters, Mary Green Hunter and Susie Hunter.[2] They resided at 1405 Broad Street in Nashville, Tennessee.[3]

Young joined the freemasonry in Edgefield, and he became a 14th-degree Knights Templar.[2] Initially a supporter of the Whig Party like the rest of his family, he joined the Democratic Party because of the war.[2]

Young traveled in Europe and the Holy Land.[3]

Young died of strangulated hernia in February 1902 at his Nashville residence.[3] His funeral was held at the West End Methodist Church in Nashville, Tennessee.[3]

• Personages: A Book of Living Characters. (Nashville, Tennessee: Printed for the author by John Berry McFerrin, 1861).[7]
• Celebrities and less (European and American) (Nashville, Tennessee: Publishing House of the M. E. Church, South, 1888).[7]
• Reminiscences. (Nashville, Dallas, Publishing House Methodist Episcopal Church, South, Barbee & Smith, agents, 1900).[7]