ABSTRACT
John Young (1827-1904) was born in Glasgow, Scotland, on May 10, 1827, and emigrated to Ancaster, Ontario in 1847. In 1849, he moved to Toronto where he married in 1862. He became the Comptroller of the Upper Canada Bible and Tract Societies and his family lived on the premises of the Society House in Toronto, where he died in 1904. Although he was not an Irish emigrant himself, Young's unpublished diary contains an eyewitness account the Famine voyage on a transatlantic vessel to Grosse Isle and then upriver by steamer to Montreal, Kingston, and Toronto. The unpublished diary is held in the Nancy Mallett Archive and Museum, St. James Cathedral in Toronto, which is named for archivist Nancy Mallett who is a descendant of John Young. His diary is published here for the first time.
