(died 8 Feb. 1856, aged 60), and his daughter Nancy Young (died 25 May 1861, aged 27 years and 6 months), poets. On their gravestones in St. Andrew’s United Church cemetery, Williamstown, George is described as a “poet” and his daughter is described as “a poetess.” According to their gravestones, George Young was married to Ann Murray, who died 28 May 1887, aged 84 years, and Nancy Young was the “daughter of George & Nancy Young.” We may assume, therefore, that unless George was married twice, Ann Murray was the Nancy Young the elder who was the mother of Nancy Young the poetess. Nancy Young the poetess was evidently unmarried. Her gravestone carries the statement that it was “Erected by her four brothers.” Dorothy Dumbrille wrote in 1954, “There are still some older residents of the district who can recite poems written by Nancy Young, but they are otherwise unrecorded.”

     Fortunately, the last two words by Dumbrille need no longer be taken as exactly correct. In the scrapbook designated by the abbreviation ASC in the notes to the present work, there is a newspaper clipping of a 24-line poem by “Nancy Young,” which begins with the words, “My generous friends, though strangers, that live in Cornwall town.” An editorial note explains that in response to a poem by Nancy Young (on the subject of an Irishman who kidnapped his bride) which the newspaper had published a few weeks earlier, some young men had made Nancy Young a gift of furs, and that the present poem was her address to these men. The poem thus born, while conventional in ideas, shows advanced skills in versification and a good sense of words.

     The original poem about the Irishman can probably be identified with “The South Branch Song,” which was printed or reprinted under the name of Mary (rather than Nancy) Young in the Glengarry News of 9 Nov. 1983 and the 1983 history of Williamstown.

Fraser, Gravestones, I, 128 * Marland Murray, The Canadian Glen Falloch Murrays (1987) 27 (gives Ann’s day of death as 27 May 1887) * Dumbrille, U, 35 * ASC i, 301 (= ASC ii, 123) * Williamstown 200, 158-159