Biography
Young was born in Calais, Maine, a small United States-British North America border town. As a young man he lived in a place where crossing the bridge over the St. Croix River to St. Stephen, New Brunswick for employment, shopping, hospitalization, or just visiting friends, was an almost daily part of life.
Following the outbreak of the American Civil War, Young traveled to Boston, Massachusetts where he joined the United States Navy. On November 16, 1863, the 18-year-old was serving aboard the USS Lehigh when the ship ran aground in Charleston Harbor. In rough waters and under heavy enemy fire, Young and two other sailors, Landsman Frank S. Gile and Landsman William Williams, succeeded in passing in a small boat from their ship to the USS Nahant with a line wrapped on a hawser that would enable the Lehigh to be freed from her position.
For this action, Young, Gile, and Williams each received the Medal of Honor, the United States' highest military decoration.
Young died in 1913 and was interred in the St. Stephen Rural Cemetery, in St. Stephen, New Brunswick, Canada, surrounded by other Canadian and American war dead.
Read more about this topic: Horatio Nelson Young
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