The Early Years

Abstract

Allyn Abbott Young was born on 19 September 1876, the centennial year of the Declaration of Independence. It was an appropriate year for his birth since he was to become an original, radical, and independent thinker in his chosen field of economics. He was the first child of Sutton Erastus Young (1847–1911) by his marriage to Emma Matilda Stickney (1846–1910). The maiden names of his paternal (Allyn) and maternal (Abbott) grandmothers provided him with his given name.¹ Subsequent children of the union were Evan Erastus (1878–1946) and Gertrude Stickney (1883–1965) Young.² The Young family was descended from English forebears who had emigrated to the Colony of Massachusetts in the 1630s. On his father’s side Allyn was a descendent of the Reverend John Yonges, son of the Reverend Christopher Yonges, vicar of Reydon and Southwold, in Suffolk County, England. The Reverend John Yonges arrived in Salem, Massachusetts in 1637, eventually settling in Connecticut where the spelling of the name was changed to Young. Allyn’s maternal ancestor was William Stickney, a native of Frampton, Lincolnshire, England, who emigrated to Massachusetts in 1638 also moving to Connecticut.