Brooks-Lowndes County GaArchives Biographies.....Young, Silas Morton 1850 - before 1913
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Joy Fisher http://www.genrecords.net/emailregistry/vols/00001.html#0000031 October 17, 2004, 10:07 pm

Author: William Harden
p. 756-758

   SILAS MORTON YOUNG. A life of industry and usefulness was that of Silas
Morton Young, who for many years was a successful farmer resident of Brooks
county and is now deceased. He represented some of the oldest and most prominent
families of Georgia.

   He was born in Lowndes county on April 3, 1850. The Young family has been
identified with Georgia since before the Revolution. William Young,
great-grandfather of Silas M., was appointed to the council of safety in
Savannah on June 22, 1775, and three weeks later represented the town and
district of Savannah in the meeting of the provincial congress. He was later a
planter in Screven county. He married Mary Henderson, and both he and his wife
were buried on a hill overlooking the valley of the Ogeechee river in Screven
county.

   James Young, the grandfather, whose birthplace was probably in Screven
county, during his young manhood moved to Bulloch county, where he bought land
and was engaged in farming with a number of slaves. He afterwards bought the
Jones homestead adjoining his first purchase, and there he and his wife spent
their last days. He married Lavinia Jones, through whom another old Georgia
family is properly introduced into this record. Her grandfather, Francis Jones,
a native of Wales, who came to America in colonial times, lived for awhile in
Virginia, and then became a pioneer settler of Burke county, Georgia. The deed
to his land, given by the King of England and bearing the date of 1765, is now
in possession of the descendant who owns the old homestead at Herndon, Burke
county. Late in life Francis Jones, having given this original homestead to a
son, moved to Screven county, where he bought a considerable tract of land. He
finally went on a visit to Virginia, where he died and was buried. He was twice
married, the first time in Wales to Mary Eobins, and second to Elizabeth
Huckabee. Three children were born of the first wife, and seven of the second,
and one of the latter was James Jones, the father of Lavinia, who married James
Young. James Jones was born in Burke county in 1764 and on September 27, 1791,
married Elizabeth Mills. They settled in Bulloch county, where he bought land
and was engaged in farming until his death, after which his widow sold the
estate and with some of her children came to Lowndes county. James Young and
wife reared ten children. The only one now living is Sarah A., the widow of
James Oliver Morton (see sketch elsewhere).

   Mathew Young, the son of James and father of Silas M., was a native of
Bulloch county, where he was reared and married, and afterward came into
southwest Georgia as one of the early settlers of Lowndes county. This was. then
a wilderness region, where wild game and Indians still abounded, and long before
the railroads brought their attendant improvements and modern conditions. The
cooking in the home was done at the fireplace, and the housewives carded, spun
and wove the cloth with which all the family were dressed. Buying land in the
southwest part of Lowndes county, Mathew Young improved a farm and lived upon it
until his death. The maiden name of his wife was Emily Morton, who was born in
Screven county, a daughter of Silas and Sabina (Archer) Morton and a sister of
the late James Oliver Morton of Quitman (see sketch). She was a lineal
descendant of the George Morton, an Englishman who joined the little colony at
Leyden, Holland, and thence in the year 1622 crossed the Atlantic and settled
among the other Pilgrims at Plymouth, Massachusetts. Through this Morton branch
some members of the Young family can directly trace their ancestry to the oldest
settlers of New England. Mr. and Mrs. Mathew Young reared seven children, named
as follows: Michael, who settled in Nankin district of Brooks county; William, a
soldier of the Civil war, who gave his life to the Southern cause on the field
of battle; James, who served four years in the Confederate army and afterwards
settled in Coryell county, Texas; Arminta, who married Isaiah Tillman of Lowndes
county; Mathew, who settled in Hunt county; and Silas Morton, a brief sketch of
whose career is now to be given.

   After spending his youth on the family homestead he bought some land in the
eastern part of Brooks county, where he resided until 1878, when he sold his
place. He then bought a tract of a thousand acres six miles north of Quitman and
engaged in farming and stock raising on an extensive and successful scale. He
gradually added to his land holdings until at the time of his death they
comprised upwards of twenty-five hundred acres, and he was one of the largest
land owners of Brooks county. He had most of this land well improved and
cultivated. A commodious residence, built in colonial style with broad verandas
and as comfortable inside as it was attractive without, situated in a grove of
fruit and native trees, was the home in which he spent the happiest years of his
life, and where he died. The late Mr. Young was a director of the First National
Bank of Quitman, was a Democrat in politics, and served his community several
years as member of the school board. Fraternally he was affiliated with Shalto
Lodge, F. & A. M.

   Silas M. Young married, on October 17, 1871, Miss Ivy Johnson, who was born
in what is now Brooks county and is still a resident on the homestead in the
Morven district of this county. Her great-grandfather was Jonathan Johnson, who
was a soldier of the Revolution and also fought in the Indian wars, and spent
his last days in Tattnall county, Georgia. Her grandfather was Benjamin Johnson,
Sr., who married Patsy Lane, and both were lifelong residents of Tattnall
county. Benjamin Johnson, Jr., Mrs. Young's father, became one of the pioneer
settlers of Brooks county, living there until his death in 1860, at the early
age of twenty-seven. He married Mary Simmons, a native of Lowndes county. Her
father, Ivy Simmons, a native of North Carolina, became a pioneer settler of
Montgomery county, Georgia, where he resided for a time, and then came to
Lowndes county and later to the east side of Brooks county, where he spent the
rest of his life. He married Piety Joyce, who was a daughter of Henry Joyce, an
early settler in South Georgia. Mary (Simmons) Johnson survived her husband more
than half a century, her death occurring when she was eighty-seven years old.
She reared two children, Mrs. Young and her brother, Benjamin, who now lives on
the old Johnson homestead.

   Mr. and Mrs. Young were the parents of the following children: Arminta
Creech; Lane; Briggs: Morton; Rachel; Lavinia; James, who died at the age of
twenty-one; and Annie, who died aged eighteen.



Additional Comments:
From:

A HISTORY OF SAVANNAH AND SOUTH GEORGIA
BY
WILLIAM HARDEN

VOLUME II
ILLUSTRATED
THE LEWIS PUBLISHING COMPANY
CHICAGO AND NEW YORK
1913




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