Wiliam Philo Young was born on February 16, 1821, in New York, likely in Northampton where his maternal and paternal grandparents were living at the time. His father Joseph Bailey Young was 31 and his mother Susan Shew Young was 24. William had at least four siblings. The family moved from Northampton to Buffalo in the 1830s where William's father was the proprietor of the United States Hotel.

By 1844 William and his brother Joseph Wesley Young with their father were running the Henrie House, a popular hotel in Cincinnati. When he was 23, William married 16-year-old Charlotte Elizabeth Davis on July 20, 1844, in Cincinnati. By 1850 the couple had had four children but only one survived.

William's brother Joseph was involved in the New Orleans hotel business in the late 1840s and around 1850 William joined him there. The brothers jointly owned an oyster saloon. In 1852 William and Charlotte's sixth child was born in New Orleans. They returned to Cincinnati and around 1856 their seventh child was born.

William Philo Young's grandson Edward Davis Young Jr. was asked to record the family history in 1974. He thought that William Philo Young and Charlotte Davis Young had divorced in about 1858 due to her father's meddling. In the 1890s William Philo wrote to his son Edward Davis Young Sr. asking for a visit. Apparently Edward Sr. felt it would have been disrespectful to his mother if he had contact with his father.

After his divorce from Charlotte, William relocated to Madison, Wisconsin, where, joined again by his father, he farmed and ran a hotel. He married Helen Moore and had six more children. In the 1885 Kansas state census, he was listed along with his wife Helen and four of their children as residents of Osborne County, Kansas. He died at his son Dean's Kansas home on May 28, 1893. --Trudy Lindaman

There is no tombstone in the Bristow Cemetery with the visible name of William Philo Young. That said, there are five graves with tombstones that are no longer readable. There are also a fair number of unmarked graves that are also unknown as to whom they are.
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