Owen D. Young was born on October 27, 1874, on a small farmhouse in the village of Van Hornesville, Town of Stark, New York.

He was the first male of the family to have a name that was not biblical since they had first arrived in 1750, driven from the Palatinate on the Rhine in Germany by constant war and religious persecution.

[2] They were taken in by the Protestant Queen Anne in England, sent to New York in 1710 to act to provide naval stores for the British fleet along the Hudson River, and eventually moving north and west, taking land from the Native Americans before settling along the Mohawk.

He had a teacher, Menzo McEwan, who taught him for years, and would eventually be responsible for Owen going to East Springfield, one of the few secondary schools that he could afford.

A few years after Josephine died, he married the fashion designer and businesswoman Louise Powis Clark (1887–1965), a widow with three children.

[4] East Springfield Academy was a small coeducational school and Young greatly enjoyed his time there,[5] making lifelong friends; later in life, he tried to attend all of the reunions.

St. Lawrence was a small institute struggling to survive and in serious need of both money and students and Owen Young was a good candidate.

During college, he not only became a brother of the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, but he also met his future wife Josephine Sheldon Edmonds, an 1886 Radcliffe graduate.

Under his guidance and teaming with president Gerard Swope, GE shifted into the extensive manufacturing of home electrical appliances, establishing the company as a leader in this field and speeding the mass electrification of farms, factories and transportation systems within the US.

After the Allied Powers had settled their war debts to Washington, a new international body met beginning in 1928 to consider a program for the final release of German obligations; Young acted as chairman.

After Young married Louise Powis Clark in 1937, the couple created a winter estate in Florida that included a formal garden and citrus stand along State Road A1A.

Although the commission represented a wide range of views and opinions, Young achieved a surprising unanimity that resulted in a report containing recommendations adopted by the legislature.