Another Comrade Gone Across
W.B. Young
"It is always hard to do justice to the memory
of a good man or woman when death has come and taken away the spirit and
left us only with clay to look upon for a little while, and then to lay
away in the wound in the bosom of Mother Earth. But when a life like
that of the subject of this sketch goes out we stand appalled at the enormity
of the task of assuming responsibility for the writing of those lines that
are to be clipped and kept by loved ones through the passing years.
W.B. Young was born in the State of Alabama
May 1, 1840. When in his youthful days his parents moved to Polk
County, Texas and in those early days, in the Lone Star State, he grew
to young manhood. When the war came on this son of the South heard
the call to arms, and on April 2, 1862, he became a private in Company
K, 5th Regiment, Texas Infanty.
From the very first of his experience as a
soldier Bro. Young was in active service. Like all the soldiers
of the Southland the years of his enlistment meant fighting and plenty
of it. He was in the following battle, in each of which he distinguished
himself by bravery and self-sacrificeing devotion: Seven Pines May
31,1862; Gains' Mill, June 27,1862; Malvern Hill June 30,1862; Fredricksburg,
Dec 12,1862; Gettysburg, July 2, 1863; Chickamauga, Sept.19 and 20, 1863;
Wilderness, May 6, 1864; Campaign around Suffolk Pertersburg and Richamond.
He was wounded at Wilderness and at Ft. Harrison, both times in the same
year. He was paroled at Appamatox Court House April 9,1865, after
having served his country for three years and seven days as her soldier,
on sone of the bloodiest battlefields the world ever saw. After the
parole this weary and worn soldier returned to his home in Polk County
to take up the thread of life again, and in the year 1868 he was married
to Miss Minerva Galloway, also of Polk County, where he lived to the day
of his death.
Bro. Young was indeed a remarkable man, in
many respects. He was as good a citizen of Texas in time of peace
as he was a soldier in those dark days of the '60s. He always stood
for lofty principles and there was never any question ot the posistion
of W.B.Young when moral issues were at stake. In those trying times
of Reconstruction days he was sturdy and calm and it was due to the influence
of just such men as he that the South was able to rise so rapidly from
the ashes of defeat, so hastily, to its place of nobility and grandeir?
in the civilization of the world.
Bro. Young joined the Methodist church back
younder across the years and no more conscientious man, regarding his obligations
as a Christian, has lived among us. He was not a person to play with
religion, but in the way he conducted his personal affairs, and in the
manner of his attitude to his neighbors he made his religion a fact, as
well as profession.
Bro. Young had grown to be what the world
calls an old man, but in the flashing of his eye and buoyancy of his soul
there was a youth everlasting . His was the spirit that knows no
sunset and to jim the calender meant nothing, so far as the influence on
his inner life was concerned.
On the 26th day of March of this year came
a bugler's call from out the boundless reaches of spance and time and W.B.
Young bade farewell to this old world and went home. They took his
body and laid it down out there where the flowers of springtime are bloomin
and where tho soft sweet zephyrs are sighing among the leafy branches,
and where newly mated birds four forth their intoxicating symphonics of
life and love and hope. There the tired body rests quietly today,
but sonehow, we seem to be able to look across the river and see
a soldier, clothed not in the beautiful gray of the precious Southland,
but wearing a shimmering whiteness, washed spotless in the blood of the
Lamb. And sone day we hope to meet him in that land where those who
reach there will never be mustered out!"
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