Mary "Polly" Young - Later Life

Later Life

By mid-1850s the Pitcairn population seemed to have grown too large for the 4.6 km2 (2.9 sq.mi) island and its leaders appealed to the British government for assistance. They were offered another colonial possession, the 34.6 km2 (13.3 sq.mi) Norfolk Island and, on 3 May 1856, the entire community of 193 people set sail for Norfolk on board the Morayshire, arriving on 8 June after an unhappy, inconvenience-laden five-week voyage. After eighteen months on Norfolk, however, seventeen Pitcairners sailed back to their home island and, five years later, another twenty-seven followed. Nine of Mary Young's children were born on Pitcairn before the 1856 departure, five more were born on Norfolk, and the last three were born on Pitcairn, after she and Thursday October returned in 1864. Her last child, a daughter, born in 1868, when she was 43, died a few weeks after birth.

Mary Young was 60 years old when she died on Pitcairn Island from dropsy, an abnormal accumulation of fluids, referenced in modern medicine as edema.