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!" 
 
Submitted by Marjorie Cain on July 11, 2000 
Date and source unknown. 
(Wesley B. Young died on March 26,1925 and is buried at Peebles Cem.)

Emailed from:  Allegra Jones, ancjones@yahoo.com