Dr. Thomas Young— "Eternal Fisher in Troubled Waters" NOTES FOR A BIOGRAPHY By DAVID FREEMAN HAWKE' H, -istorians have virtually ignored Dr. Thomas Young, but somewhere, some day soon, a graduate student—possibly a member of Students for a Democratic Society—will stumble upon this man of "noisy fame"1 and seek to refurbish his reputation. Dr. Young is unquestionably the most unwritten about man of distinction of the American Revolution.2 He might be called America's first professional revolutionist, a man who did as much as any individual not only to bring about the Revolution but in the process attempt to make it a real revolution, not just a war for independence. In four colonies (New York, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, and Pennsylvania) and possibly a fifth (North Carolina) he prodded the citizens steadily toward revolt. ("I presume New York will fall behind none of her sister Colonies, in the alacrity and extent of her operations" went a typical admonishment in 1774. )3 Vermont owed to him its name, its constitution, and possibly its statehood, for it was Young who first urged the people there to peel *The author is professor of history at Pace College. 1 Edward Shippen, Jr., to Jasper Yeates, May 23,1776, Balch Papers, Historical Society of Pennsylvania (hereafter cited as HSP). 2Nothing of substance has been done except Henry H. Edes, "Memoir of Dr. Thomas Young, 1731-1777" Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts (Boston, 1910), XI, 2—54, and Edes presents more a collection of documents than a study of the man. There is an essay by Gilbert Harry Doane in the Dictionary of American Biography, which corrects a number of Edes's errors. Doane's promised biography of Young has never been completed. More recendy, there is an article on Young by Renwick K. Caldwell, "The Man Who Named Vermont" Vermont History, XXVI (October 1958), 204-300. '8Ycmng to John Lamb, May 13, 1774, in Isaac Q. Leake, Memoir of the Life and Times of General John Lamb ... (Albany, 1850), 85. t7l