William Young

Sir William Young, 1st Baronet (c. 1724 – c. 1788) was a British colonial administrator and planter. He served as President of the Commission for the Sale of Lands in the Ceded Islands, and was appointed the first non-military governor of Dominica in 1768.

Early life

William Young was born in the British colony of Antigua c. 1724. He was the son of William Young, a doctor who had fled from Scotland after the suppression of the Jacobite rising of 1715 as a result of his pro-Jacobite sympathies.

Career

Young was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1748, his candidature citation reading "Residing at Chalton near Canterbury, A Gentleman well versed in Natural and Experimental knowledge, and alwaies ready to promote whatever may tend to the Improvement of Arts and Sciences". He was the author of Considerations which may tend to promote the settlement of our new West-India colonies: by encouraging individuals to embark in the undertaking, published in 1764.

Early in 1764, Prime Minister George Grenville nominated Young and he was appointed in the same year to be President of the Commission for the Sale of Lands in the Ceded Islands. The islands included Grenada, Tobago, Dominica, and St Vincent, acquired from France as a result of the 1763 Peace of Paris. The commission was under instructions to create model colonies, which would learn from the success of others but which would avoid their problems of depleted fertility and environmental degradation. In late 1764, Young and his group sailed for Barbados, spending eight years away from his family during the period of 1764 to 1773, though in fact he made at least two return journeys in 1767 and 1770. James Harris reports on attending concerts at Young's residence in those years. Of particular note during this time, Young employed the artist Agostino Brunias to record Young's progress and the visual context of his Commission's work. Young was also a diarist and illustrator and documented his own time in the Caribbean islands. He recorded "110 voyages of a like nature performed in the course of nine years amongst the ceded islands on the service of the Commission for the sale of lands."