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Author: Young, David

Biography:

YOUNG, David (1781-1852: ancestry.com)

David Young of New Jersey, revered to this day as the founding editor of the Farmer's Almanac, was the son of Sarah (Mott) and Amos Young, farmers, and was born in Pine Brook NJ. He does not appear to have had a college education but he loved learning ("Philom," for "philomath," was the term he used to identify himself) and became a schoolteacher in Elizabethtown (now Elizabeth) and elsewhere around the state. He took a special interest in astronomy and published some of his lectures on the subject. In 1808 he married Mary Atkins in Newark; they had no children. His first almanac appears to have been the United States Almanac for 1810, printed in Elizabethtown in 1809. In 1814, the year of his first Citizen and Farmer's Almanac, he and the publisher Jacob Mann of Morristown founded the Almanac Publishing Company. Young remained chief editor of the Farmer's Almanac until at least 1847. He died in Hanover NJ. As death notices carried around the country observed, his name was familiar "as household words to those who have ever seen an almanac within the past half century." He is buried in Hanover Churchyard. (ancestry.com 16 Mar. 2021; findmypast.com 16 Mar. 2021; WorldCat; DAB; Middlebury Register [Middlebury VT] 3 Mar. 1852)

 

Books written (3):

Elizabeth-town [NJ]: printed by Woodruff and Periam, 1804