Mary "Polly" Young

Mary Young (28 January 1825 – 16 June 1885) was a Pitcairn Islander, a granddaughter of Mutiny on the Bounty survivor Edward "Ned" Young and his Tahitian wife Toofaiti. Mary and her husband, Thursday October Christian II, a grandson of Fletcher Christian and a longtime leader of the island's community, were the parents of seventeen children and the ancestors of subsequent leadership figures of the island.

Family

Ned Young (c.1762–1800) and Toofaiti (c.1773–1831) had four children, all born on Pitcairn: Polly (c.1794–1843), George (c.1797–1831), Robert (c.1799–1831) and William, Mary Young's father (1799–1839). Mary's mother, Elizabeth "Betsy" Mills (1792–1883), also born on Pitcairn, was the older of two children born to Bounty mutineer John Mills (1749–1793) and his Tahitian wife Vahineatua (c.1772–c.1808). In 1811 Elizabeth married Matthew Quintal (1791–1814), the eldest of five children born to Bounty mutineer Matthew Quintal (1766–1799) and his Tahitian wife Tevarua (1774–1799). Described as violent and quick-tempered, the elder Quintal was killed, within eyesight of seven-year-old Elizabeth, by Ned Young and the other Bounty mutineer, John Adams (1767–1829). Three years after her marriage and the birth of two sons, John (1812–1838) and Matthew (1814–1865), Elizabeth was widowed when the younger Quintal was lost at sea. Nine years later, in 1823, she married William Young and, between 1823 and 1837, bore seven children: Mayhew (died following birth in 1823), Mary, her first daughter, then William Mayhew (1827–1876), Miriam (1829–1911), twins Lydia (1832–1883) and Dorcas (1832–1917) and, five years later, Robert, who died five months after birth in 1837.

Marriage

In 1838 Pitcairn Island became a British colony and, the following year, Mary Young, who was nicknamed "Polly", after her father's sister, married, at age 14, Thursday October Christian II (1820–1911), the grandson of mutiny leader Fletcher Christian (1764–1793), and bore 17 children between 1840 and 1868. Her husband's father, Thursday October Christian I (1790–1831), so named to commemorate the day of his birth, was the first of three children born to Fletcher Christian and his Tahitian wife Mauatua (c.1762–1841), and the first child that came into the world on Pitcairn Island following the arrival of the Bounty. Thursday October I, who was three when his father was killed, married Teraura (c.1775–1850) in 1805, upon reaching his fifteenth birthday, and they became the parents of seven children: Joseph John (1806–1831), Charles (1808–1831), Mary (1810–1852), Polly (1814–1831), Arthur (1815–no date of death indicated), Peggy (1815–1884) and, finally, Thursday October II, who lived a decade into the 20th century, dying seven months past his 90th birthday.

Children of Mary Young and Thursday October Christian II

Later life

By mid-1850s the Pitcairn population seemed to have grown too large for the 4.6 km2 (2.9 sq.mi) island and its leaders appealed to the British government for assistance. They were offered another colonial possession, the 34.6 km2 (13.3 sq.mi) Norfolk Island and, on 3 May 1856, the entire community of 193 people set sail for Norfolk on board the Morayshire, arriving on 8 June after an unhappy, inconvenience-laden five-week voyage. After eighteen months on Norfolk, however, seventeen Pitcairners sailed back to their home island and, five years later, another twenty-seven followed. Nine of Mary Young's children were born on Pitcairn before the 1856 departure, five more were born on Norfolk, and the last three were born on Pitcairn, after she and Thursday October returned in 1864. Her last child, a daughter, born in 1868, when she was 43, died a few weeks after birth.

Mary Young was 60 years old when she died on Pitcairn Island from dropsy, an abnormal accumulation of fluids, referenced in modern medicine as edema.