Descendants of Robert Young (1756-1817)
Robert Young was a Scots-Irish wheelwright, who married Martha Hunter (1764-1851) before emigrating from Northern Ireland, County Down, about 1794. It is said that they traveled up the Susquehanna to Harrisburg, and lived there for a while, before moving on to Plum Township near New Texas Road. In 1817, Robert purchased a 45-acre farm in what is now Monroeville from James Donaughey. The land was originally patented in 1788 to Henry Cotton and was called “Yorick.”
The couple had seven children (Sarah, Elizabeth, Jane, Robert, John, Nancy and Josiah). The two older girls were to marry local farmers from another of Monroeville’s pioneering families -- the McCullys. Robert Young’s son, Josiah (1809-1885), was to marry Catherine McClintock (1831-1913). It was Josiah who would inherit the original family farm, working it until he sold it and moved to Turtle Creek, Pa., in 1879.
Josiah and Catherine had five children, and their son Wilbert (who married Jane Bestwick) went on to buy a nearby farm (located to the south-east of today’s Monroeville Mall).
Wilbert Josiah Young (1861-1935) was a farmer who occasionally found work as a miner once coal mining began in the area in the late 1800s. In addition, to selling produce from the farm to his neighbors in Pitcairn, he was draw on his mining experience by opening a coal mine on his property, and hauling coal from there to Pitcairn. A sandstone quarry, also operating on his property, provided foundation stone to Pitcairn contractors.
When Wilbert died in 1935, one of his sons, Josiah M. Young (1900-1981) bought out the other heirs and continued to farm the combined lands until, in 1966, he sold the 34-acre farm to the Borough of Monroeville for the proposed “Pioneer Park.”
In the 1940s, James and Jennie Young had a store and gas station on the family property near James Street, a place that would come to be known to the locals as “Young’s Corner.”
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Sources: The Robert Young Family Tree, Josiah Lynn Young.
Letter, Grant Young, August 8, 1999.
Interview with Josiah M. Young, Gregory G. Falvo, July 18, 1977.