Saturday, June 16, 2012

Fall from a Buggy: The Death of Sarah Everett Young

Born in 1797 in Bulloch County, Georgia, Sarah Everett was my maternal 3rd great grandmother. Her parents were Jane Carter and Joshua Everett. She married Michael Young in Bulloch County in 1819, and their son Remer Young (1826-1888) was my 2nd great grandfather. By the 1830 census, the Youngs are living in Thomas County, Georgia.

While I was researching Sarah’s mother, Jane Carter, I looked up the Thomasville, Georgia, newspaper on South Georgia Historic Newspapers which has digitized copies of the Thomasville Times Enterprise from 1873 to 1922. While the articles don’t go back far enough to research Jane, I decided to see if there was an obituary for Sarah. I found an article about a buggy accident that later resulted in her death [1].

1876_Apr_15 Thomasville Times pg 3 Sarah Everett Young
Sarah was headed into town on a Thursday from her home three miles away when the “horse took fright, and started to run.” Sarah and the young girl who was with her were thrown from the buggy. The young girl wasn’t hurt, but Sarah hit her head which knocked her unconscious. She was taken to the home of her son (“Col. Young”—probably William Joshua Young who was a Colonel in the Confederate Army) where she had been living and was given medical treatment, but there was no hope of recovery [2]. She died two days later on Saturday, April 15, 1876, never regaining consciousness [3]. She was in her late 70s. Funeral services were held at her son’s house, officiated by Rev. Mr. Quaterman of the Presbyterian Church, and she was buried in the “new cemetery” in Thomasville [4]. The April 22, 1876, issue of the Thomasville Times Enterprise notes, “Her spirit gently took its flight from the bruised body which had been its tenement for near three score years and ten” [5]. The matriarch of the Young family of Thomas County, Georgia, was gone. Rest in Peace, Sarah.


Catherine
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[1] Sad Accident, Thomasville Times Enterprise, April 15, 1876, p. 3. Presented online by the Digital Library of Georgia.
[2] See footnote 1 above.
[3] Article about the death of Sarah Young. Thomasville Times Enterprise, April 22, 1876, p. 3. Presented online by the Digital Library of Georgia.
[4] See footnote 3 above.
[5] See footnote 3 above.

2 comments:

  1. Before you found this article, did you know that your 3rd great grandmother died this way? I found out about how a 2nd great aunt of mine died by first finding her death certificate online (Chicago), then found newspaper article about the accident.

    See Thriller Thursday - Hit by Auto.

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  2. Catherine PendletonJune 18, 2012 at 4:55 AM

    Just read your post. Oh my! How awful.

    No, I'd never heard how she died. I had always assumed from "old age." My mom didn't know either when I told her I'd found this article. This makes two ancestors of mine who died from buggy accidents, but I knew about the other one (my 2nd great grandfather Philip Coleman Pendleton).

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