[3][1] Their mother had moved to Somerville, Massachusetts, to work at a nursing home while her sons stayed in Lyndon until their grandfather's death in 1843.

[1] Young is believed to have grown up in St. Johnsbury[3] and can be found in the 1850 census records for Caledonia County as a resident of a farm belonging to a George Aldrich.

[1] Young left Vermont in 1857 and may have possibly studied art in Worcester, Massachusetts before moving to New York City.

[4] In 1859, Young boarded a steamer to California via the Panama Canal in search of gold in the Sierra Nevada mountain range.

[3] He joined the San Francisco Artists' Union in 1868 and exhibited Vernal Fall at the 6th Mechanics' Institute in Fair the same year.

The same year, Morris Schwab's gallery exhibited Young's painting Echo Lake, the name by which several places in California, Colorado, and Utah are known.

[3] Several other paintings are dated to the same year, including Great Blue Canyon, Sierra Nevada, and Rocky Mountain Scene, which Trenton wrote "suggest the limitless expanse and remoteness of the frontier region".