Sir Samuel Young, 1st Baronet

Sir Samuel Young Bt.
Born(1766-02-23)23 February 1766
London
Died14 December 1826(1826-12-14) (aged 60)
Formosa Place, Cookham, Berks[1]
NationalityBritish
OccupationColonial administrator
Spouse(s)Emily Baring, granddaughter of Johann Baring
ChildrenSir George Young, 2nd Baronet
FatherAdmiral Sir George Young
HonoursFRS

Sir Samuel Young, 1st Baronet (1766–1826) FRS, British colonial administrator with the East India Company.

Biography

Samuel Young was born on 23 February 1766,[2] the elder son of George Young (later Admiral Sir George Young), and his first wife Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Bradshaw of Buckinghamshire.[2] He went out to India as a civil servant of the East India Company and succeeded in making his reputation and fortune in the Presidencies of Calcutta and later Madras.[2][3]

Portrait of Lady Young (née Baring) by John Smart

On 28 April 1796 he married Emily Baring (1775–1847), daughter of Charles Baring of Exmouth and granddaughter of Johann Baring whose family went on to found Barings Bank.[2][3][4][5] Samuel and Emily had nine children, the eldest, George Young, later became Sir George Young, 2nd Baronet. Three of their sons followed their father's footsteps in the service of the East India Company.[3][6]

In March 1795, after his return from India, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society.[2][7]

At some point the benefit to a substantial debt from the Nabobs of the Carnatic Sultanate had been transferred to Samuel Young.[8] In 1809 the debt due to Young was 10,000 Madras Pagodas, which in UK sterling, with interest added, was c. £7854, the modern day equivalent would be about £10 million.[9]

Geoffrey Winthrop Young, who was Samuel Young's great-grandson wrote that Samuel was “small, narrow, obstinate, quarrelsome, a hedonist, and with the one merit of artistic taste and connoisseurship, which led to his fine collection of stones, jewels, pictures, shells, etc. and to his consorting with scientists such as Sir Joseph Banks”. In Winthrop Young's opinion Samuel was deplorable and he has said that his father always spoke of Samuel with contempt.[10] However, Samuel was dead before either Winthrop Young or his father were born and their antipathy towards their own close ancestor ought be set against commonly held views which arose in the latter part of the eighteenth century about men who had enriched themselves through the East India Company,[11] and who were even subject to satire on the stage in productions like Samuel Foote's play The Nabob.[12]

In November 1813 Young was created 1st Baronet Young of Formosa Place in Berkshire.[13][14] He was nominated as a sheriff of Berkshire in 1817.[15]

Young died on 14 December 1826.[2] There is a memorial wall tablet in Holy Trinity Church, Cookham dedicated to Sir Samuel Young, his wife Emily and Samuel's father, Admiral Sir George Young.[3] There is also a tablet which commemorates his youngest son, Edward Lloyd who drowned in the Thames at the age of 7, and his youngest sister Maria.[16]

See also

References

  1. ^ "Died". Bath Chronicle and Weekly Gazette. 21 December 1826. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  2. ^ a b c d e f "RECORD Young; Sir; Samuel (1766 - 1826)". Royal Society. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  3. ^ a b c d "John Smart (British, 1741-1811)". Christie's. November 2019. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  4. ^ "Mr. Alexander Baring". The Times (London, England). No. 46071. 2 March 1932.
  5. ^ "Portrait of Lady Young, Emily Baring (d.1847) by John Smart". Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  6. ^ Burke, Bernard (1858). A Genealogical and Heraldic Dictionary of the Peerage and Baronetage of the British Empire. p. 1091. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  7. ^ Home, R. W. (2002). "The Royal Society and the Empire: The Colonial and Commonwealth Fellowship. Part 1. 1731-1847". Notes and Records of the Royal Society of London. 56 (3): 307–332. doi:10.1098/rsnr.2002.0185. JSTOR 3557735.
  8. ^ The Schedule of Claims made before the Commissioners for investigating the Debts of the late Nabobs of the Carnatic, by Parties to the Deed. 1816. pp. 542–543. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  9. ^ "Schedule of claims made before the Commissioners for investigating the Debts of the late Nabobs of the Carnatic, by Parties to the Deed". London Gazette. 30 January 1810. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  10. ^ Hankinson, Alan (1995). Geoffrey Winthrop Young: Poet, Educator, Mountaineer. Hodder & Stoughton. p. 9. ISBN 9780340576090.
  11. ^ "The East India Company and public opinion". Parliament UK. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  12. ^ Lawson, Philip; Phillips, Jim (1984). ""Our Execrable Banditti": Perceptions of Nabobs in Mid-Eighteenth Century Britain". Albion. 16 (3). Cambridge University Press: 225–241. doi:10.2307/4048755. JSTOR 4048755. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  13. ^ "ERRATA in the Gazette of the 25th ultimo, in the Grants of the Dignity of Baronets". London Gazette. 28 September 1813. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  14. ^ Foster, Joseph, ed. (1881). The Baronetage and Knightage. Nichols and Sons. p. 676. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  15. ^ "The names of those who were nominated for Sheriffs by the Lords of the Council". London Gazette. 15 November 1817. Retrieved 24 November 2024.
  16. ^ "Cookham, Holy Trinity Church: The memorial for Maria Young and others". www.geograph.org.uk. 20 January 2024. Retrieved 24 November 2024.