Excerpt on Robert Young from Ministers of the PBA

Robert Fletcher Young: b. Sept. 4, 1810, near Coatesville, Pa.; d. Jan. 5, 1884, Haddonfield, N.J.; professed faith in Christ at age 14; baptized in 1824 and received into the Hephzibah Baptist Church, Chester Co., Pa.; at age 17, “feeling that he was called to preach the Gospel, he began a course of preparatory study of Latin and Greek at Moscow Academy,” Chester Co., Pa.; m. Maria Ann Gilbert (1815/16, Pa.- ), Jan. 8, 1836, Chestnut Hill, Pa.; lic. 1831, Bethesda Baptist Church, Chester Co., Pa.; entered Hamilton Literary and Theological Institution, 1831, but left in 1833 to take charge of a meeting at Milestown, near Phila., which resulted in a Baptist church being organized there; ord. as an evangelist, Feb. 19, 1834, Milestown, Pa.; called as first pastor, Union Baptist, Milestown, Pa., Nov. 1833-1834, with Dyer A. Nichols (q.v.), he helped found the Baptist church at Chestnut Hill, Pa., Sept. 6, 1834; pastor, Chestnut Hill, Jan. 1 (ord. Feb. 19), 1835-Sept. 1849, while also supplying at Mount Pleasant (Montgomery Co.), Pa., 1835-[1836], Cold Point, Pa., ca. 1837-1849, and baptizing the first converts at Schuylkill Falls, Pa., 1838; pastor, First Baptist, Salem, N.J., Oct. 1, 1849-Oct. 1, 1854, where he conceived of the idea of a High School for the southern part of N.J. under the control of the Baptists, which eventually led to the resolution for such a school for both sexes at Hightstown, N.J., in 1865 and its opening in 1870; he returned as pastor to Chestnut Hill, Phila., Oct. 1854-Mar. 1859, “and gathered the scattered flock;” in Mar. 1859, at the request of the Committee on City Missions, “he went into the 19th ward, Philadelphia, and the following May organized what is the present Frankford Avenue church,” first pastor, Frankford Ave. Baptist, Phila., May 1859-Dec. 1861, pastor, First Baptist, Haddonfield, N.J., (called Nov. 21, 1861) Jan. 1, 1862 (he and his wife received as members Feb. 20th)-Jan. 5, 1884. Young was the author of the Circular Letter, “The Christian’s lamp to be ever trimmed and burning; or, Exemplary Piety,” in W.N.J.B.A., 1863, 20-24, and “Historical Sketch of the Haddonfield Baptist Church, Camden County, N.J.,” in W.N.J.B.A., 1878, 35-40. Joseph Belcher (q.v.) in his Pillar of Memorial (1858), said: “If in this discourse we might specify individual cases, we could give a long list of remarkable conversions and baptisms which strikingly illustrate the sovereignty of the blessed God. Fourteen years ago [1844], our brother, the Rev. Robert F. Young baptized at the same time a man aged one hundred and one years, and his great granddaughter, aged ten. The old man, or rather as to his religion, ‘the infant of days,’ lived three years maturing his Christian graces, and the great granddaughter yet lives, it is believed, to adorn the gospel of Jesus. And only last year the Union Colored Church of this city reported the baptism of a Christian sister at the age of one hundred and two years.” Young “made no pretensions and was eminent for humility, tenderness and efficiency”—Griffiths.