Floyd Edward Young

FLOYD EDWARD YOUNG has been a factor in affairs at Stockton for many years, where his attainments are most widely known and appreciated as a lawyer. He has practiced law for the past six years, and has had remarkable success, particularly in criminal cases. He has been attorney for the defense in many important criminal trials all over Western Kansas, and his reputation in that branch of law is well justified.

Mr. Young was born at Oskaloosa, Mahaska County, Iowa, August 16, 1868. His grandfather was a native of Ireland, and in early life came to America and pre-empted a tract of land in Johnson County, Indiana, where he cleared a farm in the woods. Later he moved to Albia, Iowa, whore he died and where his remains now rest. Jonathan E. Young, father of the Stockton lawyer, was also a man who helped make history in Northwestern Kansas. He was born in Brown County, Ohio, in 1825. He grew up in Johnson County, Indiana, was married there, and early entered the ministry of the Congregational Church. He preached in various localities in Iowa, and in 1874 came to Kansas and did much of the pioneer work of his church over the northwestern counties of the state. He organized many rural churches, and was active in the cause for many years. It was no inconsistency with his religious calling that in the early days he hunted buffalo in Phillips County. He was also a soldier of the Union, having enlisted in 1862 in Company E of the Thirty-Third Iowa Infantry. His honorable discharge was given him after he had completed thirty-seven months in the service. He helped capture Helena, Arkansas. July 4, 1863, was at Jenkins Ferry, the siege of Mobile, and was on guard duty at Little Rock, Arkansas, for a year and half. In politics he was a republican. Rev. Mr. Young died at Harrimon, Tennessee, in 1906. He married Lena A. Evans, who was born in Brown County, Ohio, in 1825 and died in Phillips County, Kansas, in 1884. A brief record of their children is as follows: James H., a lawyer by profession, who died at Warsaw, Indiana, in 1908; William A., who was a boy of fifteen when he was accepted in the Union army during the Civil war, and shortly afterward he was stricken with typhoid fever and died while a soldier, being buried at Evansville, Indiana; Mary E., living at Petaluma, California, widow of F. W. Agard, a carpenter who died at Guthrie Center, Iowa; Mattie J., wife of Philip Heil, who has a large poultry farm in the famous poultry center of Petaluma, California; Floyd E.; and Frank, who died in infancy.

Floyd E. Young hardly remembers when his parents moved to Kansas. He attended the rural schools of Phillips County, and largely through his own exertions and earnings paid two years' tuition in the Stockton Academy. For twenty-nine months he was a teacher in the rural districts of Phillips County. In order to pay his tuition he learned and followed the trade of printer. In 1895 he bought the Western News at Stockton, and edited that well known old journal for nine years. In 1902 he was appointed postmaster of Stockton, and filled that office for ten years during the administration of Roosevelt and Taft. In the meantime he studied law, was admitted to the bar in 1913, and resigned the postmastership in order to take up active practice. His offices are in the postoffice building.

Mr. Young served three years as police judge of Stockton, as justice of the peace four years, and in November, 1918, was elected county attorney. He is a republican, a member of the Congregational Church, in which he has held the offices of clerk and trustee for several years, and is a member of Stockton Camp No. 2089, Modern Woodmen of America, the Knights and Ladies of Security, and is a former member of the Independent Order of Odd Fellows.

Mr. Young resides in a modern residence which he built in 1904. He married September 20, 1898, at Stockton, Miss Olive B. Andrews, a native of Independence, Iowa. Her father was Francis M. Andrews, who came to Kansas in 1896 from Independence, Iowa, and passed his life as a farmer and later as fruit raiser at Pomona, California, where he died in 1916.

Pages 2399-2400.