San Luis Obispo County Biographies

JOHN V. N. YOUNG

Submitted by Peggy Hooper

This file is part of the California Genealogy & History Archives
http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~cagha/index.htm


JOHN V. N. YOUNG, a farmer of the Arroyo Grande Valley, was born in Otsego County, 
New York, in 1826, of which State both his parents, who are not now living, were also 
natives. They had a large farm, which was the family home until the spring of 1836, 
when they all moved to Michigan, at a period when there was a grand rush of emigration 
from the Empire to the Wolverine State. Until 1859 Mr. Young remained at his father's 
home upon a farm. He then started West again and settled for a few years on the east 
side of the Sierra Nevada mountains, upon a farm. In 1867 he came to San Luis Obispo 
County, and kept a hotel at the county-seat, where now the French Hotel is. 
Originally he intended to purchase a ranch, and had no idea of keeping a hotel ; but the 
land bargain which he thought he had made fell through; and so he tried the hotel business. 
A year of this was enough for him, and he bought a ranch of 1,220 acres twelve miles west 
of Paso Robles, where he raised live-stock for twelve years. Disposing of this property in 
1883, he moved upon his present place, which he had purchased in the fall of 1878. It 
comprises twenty-five acres, is near the town of Arroyo Grande, and here he raises fruit 
and vegetables. He still has a place of 160 acres rented out near Paso Robles. His present 
garden spot on the Arroyo Grande Creek is prettily situated. His orchard of fifteen acres 
there is one of the finest in the whole valley. 

Mr. Young was married in 1852, to Miss Babbitt, of Elmira, New York, and of a family 
well known throughout that section of the State. They have two sons and three daughters. 

History of Santa Barbara, San Luis Obispo and Ventura Counties, California  - by 
C.M. Gidney, Benjamin Brooks, Edwin M. Sheridan, Vol I, II.  -Lewis Publ. Co., 
Chicago, 1917.