Robert A. Young | |
---|---|
Born |
Robert Anderson Young January 23, 1824 Campbell's Station, Knox County, Tennessee, U.S. |
Died | February 1902 Nashville, Davidson County, Tennessee, U.S. |
Cause of death | strangulated hernia |
Alma mater |
Washington College Jackson College Florence Wesleyan University |
Occupation | Clergyman |
Political party |
Whig Party Democratic Party |
Spouse(s) | Mary A. Kemmer Anna Green Hunter |
Parent(s) | John C. Young Lucinda Hyder |
Relatives | Alexander Little Page Green (father-in-law) |
For the Missouri politician, see Robert A. Young.
Robert A. Young (1824-1902) was an American minister of the Methodist Episcopal Church, South. A descendant of slaveholding planters, he served as a minister in many churches in Tennessee, Alabama and Missouri in the Antebellum South. He served as the President of Florence Wesleyan University (later known as the University of North Alabama in Florence, Alabama from 1861 to 1864. He supported the Confederate States of America during the American Civil War, and he did not believe in the "social equality of the Negro" after the war. He was a founding trustee of Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tennessee.
Robert A. Young was born on January 23, 1824 in Campbell's Station, Knox County, Tennessee. 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. He had two sisters and two brothers, including Robert R. Moore, another Methodist minister.
His paternal grandfather, Henry Young, immigrated from England to the United States as a ship-carpenter, settling in Baltimore, Maryland. His mother, Lucinda Hyder, was born in Carter County, Tennessee; her ancestors had immigrated to the United States from Germany. 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.
Young was raised in a Presbyterian family, but he joined the Methodist Episcopal Church, South in 1842. He graduated from Washington College, a Presbyterian college, in 1844. One of his classmates was Zebulon Baird Vance, who later served as the Governor of North Carolina. Young studied medicine briefly with a physician in Rheatown, Tennessee, but he decided to serve the Methodist Episcopal Church instead. As a minister, he received a master of arts degree from Jackson College in 1850. Additionally, he received a Doctor of Divinity from Florence Wesleyan University during the civil war. He was the recipient of a Legum Doctor from Washington College in 1895.