Jess Young
{{Short description|British botanical collector 1851–1909}}
File:Giles Fourth Expedition party.jpg
Jess Young (Jesse) (1851–1909) was an English traveller. He is best known as an explorer who accompanied Ernest Giles during his fourth expedition, making some important botanical collections along the way.{{acad|id=YN877J|name=Young, Jess}}
Life
He was a younger son of Richard Young of Wisbech, England. He attended the Abbey Park School of David James Smeaton in St Andrews, Fifeshire, Scotland, as Jesse Young.{{cite news |title=Mr Smeaton's Educational Establishment, Abbey Park, St Andrews, Prize List |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000447/18660719/034/0001 |work=Fife Herald |date=19 July 1866|page=1}} He accompanied Richard Bourke, 6th Earl of Mayo on his 1872 inspection of Port Blair in the Andaman Islands, where Lord Mayo was assassinated.
In May 1875 Giles, in listing the members of his expedition party, referred to him as "Mr Jess Young, a young friend of Sir Thomas Elder, lately arrived from England." Giles's party left Beltana, South Australia on 6 May, and arrived in Perth, Western Australia on 13 November. During the expedition, Young collected the specimens of a number of new plant species, including Eucalyptus salubris, Eucalyptus youngiana and Eremophila youngii, all from the vicinity of the oasis in South Australia named Queen Victoria Spring by Giles. The latter two species were later named in Young's honour. The National Herbarium of Victoria has specimens of Acacia collected by him between 1875 and 1880.
File:Australian Exploring Expedition Travelling Through Scrub after Jesse Young.jpg
In April 1876 a newspaper announcement stated that Young, the "Australian Explorer", would shortly leave England for New Guinea.{{cite news |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000418/18760422/004/0002 |work=Cambridge Independent Press |date=22 April 1876|page=2}} At a meeting of the Royal Geographical Society in May of that year, Young mentioned his particular interest in exploring further the coast beyond the Baxter River there, then so-called, where the SS Ellengowan had made a recent voyage.{{cite news |title=Royal Geographical Society |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/BL/0002963/18760513/041/0011 |work=Colonies and India |date=13 May 1876|pages=10–11}} In 1877 Young was entered as a student at Christ's College, Cambridge, but did not matriculate.
Young sailed for New York, around the beginning of November 1878, with backing from Sir Thomas Elder for another expedition in Australia.{{cite news |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0000505/18781104/017/0003 |work=Exeter and Plymouth Gazette Daily Telegrams |date=4 November 1878|page=3}} While he was there, his health broke down.{{cite news |title=Death of Mr. Jesse Young |url=https://trove.nla.gov.au/newspaper/article/91008580 |work=Kalgoorlie Miner |date=11 October 1909|page=2}} He spent Easter term 1879 at Christ's College, Cambridge, but did not take a degree. In December 1879 he was in New York, at a meeting of the American Geographical Society on the proposed Panama Canal, and gave a paper on the advantages of the Suez Canal.{{cite journal |title=The Interoceanic Ship Canal, Special Meeting, December 29, 1879 |journal=Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York |date=1879 |volume=11 |pages=259–300 |doi=10.2307/196511 |jstor=196511 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/196511 |issn=1536-0407}} He subsequently took positions in business and banking in the USA, returning to the United Kingdom in 1891 where he worked for the Board of Agriculture. He was on an Arctic surveying expedition in Siberia, and then had positions as an official at Kanowna, Western Australia.
Jess Young died on 8 October 1909 at Perth, Western Australia.{{cite news |title=Mr. Jess Young |url=https://www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk/viewer/bl/0001708/19091012/054/0004 |work=Evening Star |date=12 October 1909|page=4}}
Works
In 1878, Young published an account of his expedition in Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York, describing himself as "Astronomer of the Giles Expedition".{{cite journal |last1=Young |first1=Jess |title=Recent Journey of Exploration across the Continent of Australia; Its Deserts, Native Races, and Natural History |journal=Journal of the American Geographical Society of New York |date=1878 |volume=10 |pages=116–141 |doi=10.2307/196436 |jstor=196436 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/196436 |issn=1536-0407}}
References
- {{cite book | first = Norman | last = Hall | year = 1978 | title = Botanists of the Eucalypts | location = Australia | publisher = Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization | isbn=0-643-00271-5}}
- {{cite book | author = Giles, Ernest | author-link = Ernest Giles | year = 1889 | title = Australia Twice Traversed: The Romance of Exploration | location = London | publisher = Sampson Low, Marston, Searle & Rivington}}