CHAPTER TEN. THE YOUNG LINE
Branches (Young, Bennett , Plunket)
Young Family
The early native Irish in this family have been constructed, not proved, from the parents of John, Mary and Thomas Young as given on the death certificates of John and Mary and in the Minnesota census of 1880 which says that William Young, age 16 was a cousin of Richard Bennett, Jr.. Verification of this should be done as soon as the Irish make their Cork records available to the public. (See http://www.mayo-ireland.ie/Geneal/Cork/htm .) The proved family starts with the third generation of Mary, John and Thomas.
1. WILLIAM1 (for a guess) YOUNG, born about 1770; married about 1795; probably lived in County Cork. He had at least three children.
Children of William: dates all VERY approximate.
i. WILLIAM2 YOUNG, b. about 1796; married about 1818 JOHANNA----. Died about 1825. Had child MARY YOUNG.(2).
ii EDWARD YOUNG, b. about 1798; married about 1826, his brother's widow, JOHANNA.Had child JOHN YOUNG (3).
iii. JOHN YOUNG, b. about 1800; married about 1828.Had child THOMAS YOUNG (4).
This would make the emigrants, #2 and #3 Mary3 and John3, step brother and sister and #4 Thomas3 their cousin.
2. MARY3 YOUNG, b. abt 1820 (Death certificate said she had parents William and Johanna.); m. RICHARD BENNETT, about 1845.
3. JOHN3 ( Edward2, William
1) YOUNG was born in Ireland 21 June 1828 (from pension application)
and died in
Duluth, Minnesota, 6 May 1923; he is buried in Calvary Cemetery
(The informant was his daughter Margaret Samuelson who listed his father
as Edward, his mother as Johanna. This seems strange because no descendants
are named Edward.). He emigrated in 1848, and spent some time
in New York State, coming to Minnesota in 1852, and settling in Woodland
township, Wright County, Minnesota . He was married to MARGARET
PLUNKETT in Ramsey County 17 September 1859 by the Catholic priest
A. Oster. with witnesses Patrick Bannon and Mary Ferral (we have the
Ramsey County marriage record), at the Cathedral in St. Paul (pension
information). In the territorial Census of 1857 he was listed
as age 22, farmer, living in house #2 ,Town 26, Wright County, with
his cousin (?) Thomas Young, age 21. The 1900 census was a good one:
it listed him as age 66, capitalist, living with his
son; he was also listed the same year as living with his daughter in Duluth.
The picture is one of John and myself.
He bought 2 acres of land in Woodland township 27 October, 1860, 2 more in
1868. The first school in the district was situated on the property
of Patrick Bannon across the road from John Young; George M. Wright and John
Young were the first School Board.When the Culkins moved to Duluth in1896,
it was John Young who drove the horse and buggy up from Buffalo, staying
for several years, helping to landscape the lawn.
Although he started out in a log cabin he erected on his
homestead, he became quite prosperous. He was elected Treasurer of Wright
County for several terms; after his wife died and Hannah married, he left
his farm for a new house he had had built for him in the suburb of
Hamline in St. Paul. ( A nearby street was named Young Street after
him. "John Young, the developer, owned six and one half acres). The plans
(which we still have) show this "gentleman's town house" (MCB) where
he lived 1886-1896. The picture to the left shows it as it is today.
He invested heavily in land in Minnesota and the Dakotas, which he
had to sell during the great depression of 1893. Then he even
sold his fine house to pay off his debts and was left with only his pension.
He lived for a while with Will, later in Duluth with Hannah or Maggie. I
remember him as the giver of silver dollars at Christmas time; and driving
in the lead car of the Fourth of July Parade.. When he died he was
the oldest living soldier in Minnesota; a member of the local American Legion
Post, of which he was Commander for a while.
MCB said of him:
John Young's traits of character and his ambitions and desires crop out now and then in his descendants. The love of the land and the tendency to become land-poor shows up in some of us. A feeling that is more than satisfaction and less than pride when I live on my own acres is very strong in me....to walk on a piece of earth that I can claim for my own, to look at a view of mountains or river and know that I can return at will to look again, brings me as near to peace as I can come. The other thing (he) passed along to some of his blood is even more valuable. He was not afraid of solitude. He did not need constant companionship or want an audience......He took life as it was and could live with it by himself.
It is only proper to correct here the misapprehension about his Civil War service. William Culkin, his son in law, was a great student of the Civil War; he was also a gentleman and never mentioned John's part in it to his children, grandchildren or the newspapers, who all believed the following statement in his obituary:
"During the Sioux Indian War in 1962, Mr. Young was in the heart of the fighting, which centered around his homestead. When the Indian uprising was over, Mr. Young enlisted with the First Minnesota infantry to participate in the Civil was which had started in the meantime. He fought throughout the Civil war with the famous first." "When the first call for volunteers wads sounded at the opening of the Civil war, Young joined the famous First Minnesota infantry which covered itself with glory during the years of the war. He served with General Sheridan."
When I looked for John's army record this is what I found, On 10 January, 1865, John Young, laborer, age 37, was paid by the draftee David Traner, of Lakeville, Dakota County, to be his substitute, and enlist as a soldier for one year. He served four months in Company I, first regiment, Minnesota Infantry, January to April, in the army, then was invalided to Fort Snelling. MN, and was given an honorable discharge, May 16.
Bill Culkin told me that when he mentioned to his grandfather that he was going west to seek his fortune, John advised him, "Shirk, Bill, shirk, and trust no one!." My mother and Aunt Mabel said I shouldn't tell this to anyone else.
Children of John and Margaret, as listed on his pension application::i. MARY3 YOUNG, born 4 July, 1860; died 17 January 1870.
4. ii. JOHANNA YOUNG, b. 12 Feb. 1862.
iii. WILLIAM YOUNG, b. 12Sept. 1863 and died 17 October 1918, smothered in a well while trying to escape a great forest fire. He married LYDIA KRAUSE; they had eight children. For a time he was Sheriff of Wright County; later he moved to Crosby Minnesota. where he ran a wholesale grocery business and often would send Hannah a five gallon crock of butter
iv. MARGARET (MAGGIE) YOUNG. born 9 July 1866 and died in Duluth. She attended the University of Minnesota, studying music. . She married in St. Paul a lawyer JOHN SAMUELSON, born in Christiania, Norway 12 July 1869, who later became the law partner of her brother in law, William Culkin. They had one child , Irene, who lived beyond infancy; she married Robert Douse.
4. THOMAS3 (John2 ,William1) YOUNG was born in Ireland about 1830, and died at Jessenland, Sibley County, Minnesota 26 July 1901. He was probably the cousin of John and Mary.. He married, about 1863, SARAH MCQUE who was born in County Mayo, Ireland, about 1829 and died about 1900. The Minnesota territorial census of 1857 shows him living with his cousin (?) John in house #2 of Town 26 of Wright County, although no other connection has been found between them.. He took first claims in Woodland Township, Wright county, MN in 1860. (Land Office Records) Township 118, range 26. His death certificate gives his father's name as John.
Children of Thomas and Sarah, all born in Waverly, Wright County, MN:(Dates and order estimated)
i. WILLIAM YOUNG. b abt. 1863.. In the Minnesota Census of 1880, this William Young, age 16, was shown living with Richard Bennett, Jr., as a cousin. Children: Harvey.
ii. JOHN YOUNG, born 12 Aug 1864.; died in St. Croix, WI, 27 December 1931. Married MARY AGNES CARNEY; children: John, Harold, Margaret, Edmund, Emmet, Myrtle, Eva, William.
iii. THOMAS YOUNG, b. abt. 1864.
iv. DENNIS YOUNG, b. 1869.
v. MARY YOUNG, b.1871.
vi. JAMES YOUNG, b.1873.
5. JOHANNA4 (John3, Edward2, William1) YOUNG was born in Waverly, Minnesota 12 February, 1862, daughter of John and Margaret (Plunkett) Young, she died in Duluth Minnesota 7 January 1944 , and is buried there in Calvary Cemetery. She married in Waverly, 6 Juily 1886 WILLIAM CULKIN, and moved to the county seat, Buffalo. The year after she was born there was an Indian uprising and everyone in Wright County fled their houses; the next year a family was killed just a few miles away, and there was another panic.. I am going to quote here from MCB, because she wrote about her with great love and insight and I cannot improve on it:.
She had only gone to local schools though her sister, Margaret, went to the University of Minnesota. One of the two girls had to stay home and take care of the house and her father and brother. Margaret had a very good natural voice and wanted to study music. So she went to the University and Hannah stayed on the farm. I do not think she felt cheated or defeated. She thoroughly enjoyed her merry young life (later she loved to tell the tale of how once when she was out in a carriage with Will, the horses started to run away and she was the one who brought them under control again. mbf) and was surrounded by local suitors whom she led on and made fun of behind their backs. But her education was ignored after she finished grammar school. That was unfortunate, because she had an extremely good and retentive mind. She never forgot anything she learned in the country school. This was the period when McGufffey's Readers were textbooks for the study of English and Hannah knew by heart every one of the poems and stories and homilies of each volume. She also had an outsize geography but although her name is inscribed on the flyleaf. the countries described in it with their rivers and "principle products" seemed to have left no impression. I have often wondered who taught her to write. Her handwriting, slightly slanted and very delicate. was legible and decorative. I never knew her to misspell a word in any letter she wrote to me. If once she had seen a word in print, it was her permanent possession. (If she had not heard the word spoken, she said it as it looked; Be Thovan for Beethoven.)
She knew that many things were out of her reach and her defense was to mock them. She mocked books, scholarly conversations, teachers, ministers, priests and people who thought themselves important. She was jealous from the beginning of Will Culkin's knowledge and love of learning. (A few years after their marriasge he gave her for her birthday, Chesterton's Letters to his Son. mbf) But she enchanted him. She was gay and lovely to look at, with shining brown hair and a triangular face with a small, perfect nose and an excitable mouth. There were no cosmetics in Montrose, but she would rub a wet red ribbon on her cheeks to color them. She was what William Culkin gravely thought would complete his happiness and go along with his ambitions..........
She soon began to have a family...there was no artificial way to prevent that...There must have been extraordinary restraint and control in those families who always called each other Mr. and Mrs. when they were in company. My mother began with a child that lived only a fe days, then by sister Mary Louise was born within a year, I came next after three years, then William; that was the Buffalo family. My sister Dorothy, who must have been an accident, was added to it after we moved to Duluth.
Having lived on a farm with animals...and farm hands making coarse talk..my mother must have known a great deal about sex. But it always outraged her. She regarded each of her pregnancies as a catastrophe for which my father was to blame. Not that she did not love her children. But I doubt if many women of her group enjoyed sexual relations. They would have been ashamed to admit it and if any pleasure did creep into the business they would have concealed or denied it. But they thought about sex a great deal. (MCB told me that she used to keep a hat pin under her pillow for effective birthcontrol; maybe mbf)"
It must have been hard for Hannah when Will tried to teach the children. MCB said that there was a large map, either of the world or the United States, hung on the wall of the dining room, which he used to talk about during dinner, and that sometimes the rivers ran with real water that Hannah had thrown at them. But she was the one who split the wood for kindling in the cellar and the one who followed the news on the radio...it had three dials that needed to be independently adjusted and she was the only one besides myself who could tune it more than one station. When I was little, for a special treat she would show me the contents of her top bureau drawer. Make up was just powder on a fluffy puff. But she had a box full of tiny silver hearts that could be strung on a chain, some with little pearls or diamond chips in them; they were favorite gifts among her friends (girls) when she was young.
She liked very much to go to air shows, watching the parachute jumpers, the longer the delay to open the chute, the better. She could not understand why, with all our modern inventions, we had not yet reached the moon and when I, with my current knowledge of physics, tried to tell her it was impossible, she would say "Nonsense, we'll soon do it." She didn't live that long, missing by twenty-five years. When I took the grandparents out for dinner I would suggest a glass of beer...she would refuse always, but always downed hers as fast as we did when it came. And she always made me wait before driving out with me, going upstairs to change to clean underwear in case of an accident. She returned her first social security check, saying she was not a pauper. I enjoyed her immensely.
Bennett Family
1. RICHARD1 BENNETT was born in County Cork, Ireland in 1818 ; he died in Wright County Minnsota 11 October 1874. . While still in Ireland he married MARY YOUNG , who, according to her death certificate, was born in Ireland in 1820, daughter of William and Johanna Young; she could have been the sister or cousin of John and/or Thomas.. They emigrated to America on the ship Asia , which sailed from Cork 5 July 1849; as Richard Bennett 28, laborer; Mary 25, servant and Mary,0, infant. They lived in Allegheny County, New York until 1852 when their child Margaret Ellen was born; then moved to Michigan. They came Minnesota 15 Oct. 1857 (on death certificate of Mary Young Bennett). The 1857 Census shows him living in house #10, town 26 of Wright County, by himself, before his family joined him.
Children of Richard and Mary:i. MARY2 BENNETT, b. Ireland 1849. Kept house for brother after the death of their parents.
ii. (MARGARET) ELLEN BENNETT, b. New York, 15 June 1853, taught school in 1880. She died in Montrose of a cerebral hemorage. Her death certificate was signed by John Devaney of Montrose, and she was buried in St. May's cemetery at Waverly.
iii. THOMAS BENNETT, b. NY, died in infancy
2.iv. RICHARD BENNETT, Jr. b. Allegheny County, New York, Oct. 17, 1854. In the Census of 1875 he is shown as head of household #104, aged 20, with two older sisters, and three younger siblings. In the Census of 1880, his older sisters are still with him and his son William, but not his two little sisters Catherine and Jane. William Young, 16, son ot Thomas, is also living with him
v. CATHERINE BENNETT, joined convent at Mendota.
vi. (MARTHA) JANE BENNETT, b. Dec 1859. m. JOHN DEVANY abt. 1884. They had children: Thomas, John, Mary. Helen, and Eugene. Lived in Montrose.
vii. (JOHN) WILLIAM BENNETT, b. Wright County, MN 1863
2. RICHARD2 (Richard1) BENNETT, was born in. New York 1855 and was still living in 1915. He married ANNA NOLAN, 24 Nov. 1896. His sisters Mary and Margaret were still living with them in 1900. Mary giving her occupation as servant, and Margaret as teacher. He helped to organize dairy and farmers cooperatives in the region.
Children of Richard and Annie:i. JOHN3 W. BENNETT, b. Oct 1897.
ii. MARY CATHERINE BENNETT, b. 26 June, 1900.
iii. IRENE ANNA BENNETT, b.22 Aug. 1906.
The only member of this branch that has so far been identified is
1. MARGARET PLUNKETT was born in Ireland in 1832/3 and died at St. Peter, Minnesota September 25, 1885; she married 17 Sept. 1859, JOHN YOUNG.She was working for the family of William Hendrikson, in Ramsay County in 1857, age 19 according to the census of 1657. Her death certificate says she died of phthsis, tuberculosis, at St. Peter's Hospital for the Insane.. Her funeral was held at the Cathedral in St. Paul 27 September 1885; and a memorial Solemn Requiem Mass was held in Waverly. 5 October. John paid $103.65 to the undertaker for her casket, etc. on Sept. 27.
I have not been able to find out many facts about her: She was adjudged insane in October, 1879 when Hannah was 17, and committed to the insane asylum in St. Peter, Minnesota; This was 6 years after the massacre of her neighbors the Dustins by the Indians. She was married in the fall of 1859 and before the end of 1866, she had had four children, been through two bloody Indian uprisings, and her husband had gone to war. When she started cracking up, and how it was manifest, will never be known for no records for this time can be found at St. Peter's. John Youing's statement in his pension application was "she died in St. Peter, Minnesota on account of war and Indian's trouble of 1862 and 1863. Too much war at home and abroad at the same time drove her insane for over 6 years." My own feeling is that she started identifying with Kate Dustin who was about her age when she and many of her family were massacred by Indians, and was terrified for herself and her kids. The Dustins had lived about three miles away. In any case she was not present when Will Culkin was courting her daughter, nor at her wedding , nor at the birth of her children. We don't even know if she knew about these events. She was reputed to be an extremely devout Catholic.