Ron Reiff
Matt Young was a “go-getter”. After hitching a ride to get to the 400 acres he was thinking of buying, he made the deal. He stayed right there and reportedly told somebody: “THIS WOULD BE A GOOD SPOT FOR A TOWN!”
Within less than a decade, Young had attracted a number of farmers to share in the riches of the Brokenstraw Valley. He wasn’t satisfied with just one town. He attracted investors to put into another settlement along a creek that eventually was named “Mathews Run.” The road to get there still bears his name.
By the mid-1830s Matthew had passed on and Young’s ville was growing. Several businesses like a blacksmith, a feed mill, and others were committed to making Young’s ville “the” place in Warren County. Needless to say, it wasn’t long before the apostrophe disappeared and Matthew Young’s farm was an official village in the county. Community pride swelled.
The story, as I remember it, was that one of the men who was proudly developing Youngsville had to travel to the courthouse for business. While he was in Warren he had to avoid several piles of feces left behind by pigs that were simply allowed to roam free in the street. Business conducted he went home and started a movement. The group was proud of Youngsville! For one thing, livestock didn’t roam free in the street. So they began the effort to make their town the County seat!
By the 1840 election, the movement was more than talk. Even though Youngsville had fewer than 300 residents the group was making a serious push to move the County Seat. There is very little historical record of the effort but I found a very interesting tidbit from 1844: On the 28th of March, 1844 it was enacted by a unanimous vote of the borough council as follows: “From and after the first day of May next, it shall not be lawful for any hog or swine of any age to run at large within the limits of the borough of Warren.” And so it came to pass that Warren would no longer be full of…….that’s all folks!
