Posted By Les Conklin on Mar 3, 2019

February 26, 2019

When he was an old man, younger members of his family asked Searles Young to write about his life. Below  is the beginning of memoir that great, great, great grand-uncle wrote. Editor

Searls Bradford Young’s Memoir

Written c. 1908

I was born in Killingly, Conn. on March 9, 1832. Here I commenced my education by attending school in an old school house heated with a stove very unlike the stoves used at the present time. It was at the beginning of the manufactory of stoves and all were very crude.

The stove was made very much like a fireplace open in front. It was some better than the school’s old fireplace as the stove was placed in the middle of the room but it made a lot of smoke in the room.

The scholars, who knew that greatly improved stoves were on the market, bore with the stove for several years. Finally, the larger scholars complained to the trustees. When the scholars’ complaint was ignored, they resolved to get rid of the stove at all hazards.

On the last day of school, after the teacher had left, the scholars brought in a large, flat stone and four of them raised it as high above the stove as they were able. Then thy dashed the stone down and broke the stove to small pieces.

In 1839 my father sold his farm and rented another in the north part of town and after living there for one year he bought another farm in Glocester, Rhode Island. Here we found a worse school house than the one where I first attended and a stove of the same pattern that smoked full as bad as the other. However, this time the scholars chose a different way to get rid of the stove.

The teacher left the school house at the dinner hour to go to the post office. As he left, he charged them to keep a good fire.

There were many chips in the yard and they commenced to carry them in and put them on the fire until they spread out on the floor. The room so filled with smoke that no one could remain in it, so they took out one of the windows and then they would run through and jump out the back window.

Just at this time the teacher came back. He thought it useless to scold, so he ordered them to carry the chips out, but this was no easy job. They had one fair-sized shovel and by using some boards the room was at least cleared and school commenced. But this was not the end of it.

A rail fence joined the yard and the boys had left the chips so that the chips set the fence on fire. A boy was sent outside to put the fire out. He did not try very hard for he had hardly got back into school before the fence was again on fire. This was repeated three times, the last time the teacher told them to be sure to put it out or he would help them.

The incident caused so much excitement in the district that the old stove had to go. A much improved one took its place.”

March 3, 2019

The Rest of the Story: Farmer, Clergyman, Father, Soldier, California Settler

Shot in Finger, They Amputated His Arm

Searles began his memoir with the humorous stories above. His was an interesting life and here are excerpts from the remainder of the memoir and notes from my personal research. Editor

Searles B. Young In Civil War Coat, circa 1920.

When 14 years old a lovely sister died. She was only 2 ½ years older than I was and we were very close companions. Her death left me very lonely for my brothers and sisters that were left – all much older, married with families of their own. When I was 18 years old; my father having become nearly deaf, the whole business of the farm and family came upon me.

When I was 20 years old, I became a Christian and joined the church, and when I was 21, I was married to Anna Hopkins one of the best Christians. Even after my conversion, I was greatly impressed and I sought to become a minister of the Gospel. This impression became so strong that I yielded to it and left the farm and family and went to New Hampton, N.H.  to attend theological school.

For many years the slavery question had been before the country. From my childhood I had been taught the evils of slavery and as I grew older, I became an earnest advocate of the anti-slavery cause and in the election of Abraham Lincoln to the presidency. The war commenced in August 1862. I enlisted in the 7^th Rhode Island Regiment, camped at Narragansett Bay for a few weeks, and on the 10^th of September 1862 we left R.I. for the seat of war. The soldier is often called brave but I tell them that the bravest thing that I did was to kiss my wife and two children Good Bye with the chances against us ever meeting again.

We first went to Washington D.C. and camped on East Capitol Hill for a few days. I was there when the great battle of Antietam was going on, and for the first time we heard cannons that meant business. The battle was many miles asway but so many discharged at a time that it jarred the ground.

From here we marched through the city and over a long bridge (one mile long) and up on Arlington Heights. Here I was taken sick with typhoid fever. About this time the regiment was ordered to Maryland and after going as far as Frederick, they left me in a hospital.

Before I was fairly recovered from typhoid, I was sent to my regiment, which was supposed to be camped near Harper’ Ferry but when I got there, I found the regiment had started on a march, so I had to join a battery and march with them till I found my regiment.

Rest of the Memoir Missing

Unfortunately, the remaining pages of Searles’ memoir were lost sometime in the past. Since they dealt with the Battle of Fredericksburg and his days in California, my guess is that they were removed by some relative and never replaced.

Our family has a picture of Young taken in his later years. He is wearing his Army jacket. The lower part of his right arm is missing from the elbow down. The family story was that it was blown off in the Civil War.

I was able to retrieve his military records and from them I learned that he had been wounded at the Battle of Fredericksburg. He was one of 50,000 Northern troops that were killed or wounded in what was later referred to c “Burnside’s Slaughter Pen.”  According to records, Searles had had his index finger fractured in several places by a round. The treatment was to amputate the entire lower arm to prevent infection.

Here’s is how his wounds were described – “loss of index finger on right hand, gunshot in mouth and tongue, badly cut with loss of six teeth.” It’s difficult to imagine what Searles was and endured at the field hospital and then in the hospital in Washington.  The only remedy for pain was a stiff drink or a blow to the head.  Because of his wounds, Searles received an honorable discharge on February 4, 1863. He returned home to his wife and two sons.

After the war Searles was a farmer and clergyman. He and Anna lived in Foster, Rhode Island before moving to Ben Lomond, California (near San Jose).  In 1908, following his wife’s death in 1905, Searles moved to North Situate, R.I, where he died in 1925.

Note. As girls, my mother and her sister spent part of their summers at the Young farm in Killingly (where this story started). My mother recalledd that Searles was there. The photograph of Searles was probably taken by my grandather, my mother’s father, who was an avid photographer. Editor