Young was born in
Motueka,
South Island, New Zealand, the fifth child of an English farmer. Her parents were both
Plymouth Brethren. She was educated at home in addition to two years in a
boarding school in England. She moved to
Sydney, Australia in 1878, and in 1882 to Fairymead, a
sugar plantation near
Bundaberg,
Queensland owned by her brothers Arthur, Horace, and Ernest Young. She started holding
prayer meetings for the families of the planters, which became the
Young People's Scriptural Union. Eventually the group attracted 4000 members. Increasingly, she focussed on the
kanakas, whose "heathen" customs she detested. She began conducting classes in
pidgin English, using pictures and a
chrysalis to illustrate the
resurrection. In 1886 she founded the
Queensland Kanaka Mission (QKM) at Fairymead as an
evangelical,
non-denominational church. It spread to other plantations and met with considerable approval from plantation owners and officials. In 1889, Government Inspector Caulfield noted that the behaviour of some
South Sea Islanders had been improved by religious instruction. Stressing "salvation before education or civilization," it aimed to prepare the imported labourers for membership in their local established churches when they returned home. At its height, in 1904–1905, the mission employed 19 paid missionaries, and 118 unpaid "native teachers," and claimed 2,150 conversions. Between 1891 and 1900, she spent six years with the
China Inland Mission. She suffered a
nervous breakdown, but recognized the work as preparation for the launch of the
South Seas Evangelical Mission (SSEM), established in 1904 as a branch of the QKM in response to pleas from
Peter Ambuofa and other repatriated converts who solicited help establishing and teaching their own congregations. In 1904 she led groups of white missionaries to
Malaita in the Solomon Islands, hoping to nurture the newly established churches of her protégés. Young's nephew
Northcote Deck, a medical doctor, worked with Young as a missionary in the Solomon Islands. Young continued to administer the organization, from Sydney and
Katoomba, New South Wales, and made annual trips to the island until 1926. She wrote an autobiography,
Pearls from the Pacific, which was published in London in 1925. She died in
Killara, Sydney and was buried in
Gore Hill Cemetery with
Presbyterian forms. ==Notes==