On November 21, 1873, nine days before the official opening of McDonogh School, Josepha Selden Young, dressed in her uniform of a black gown with a little white collar and a white lace cap, took her place at the helm as “Matron of McDonogh.” She was just what the young boys needed as they left their mothers and the city streets to live in the uncharted territory of the farm school.
Young was the mother figure in “Old House.” For 38 years, she cared for her family of boys, teachers, and staff of various kinds. In a tribute to Young, Arthur Dorsey Thompson, Class of 1891, wrote, “It’s not the number of things she did throughout her career, but the importance in the development and successful growth of the school and in the formative periods of the lives of some 1,300 McDonogh boys to whom she was another mother.”
In the 1890s, the Board of Trustees honored Young’s commitment to the school by planting a pin oak tree along Shell Road in the spot where she liked to stand and watch over the boys as they played in the orchard. In 1907, when Mrs. Young’s son, Charles, felt it was time for his mother to retire, he arranged for a plaque to be added to the tree inscribed with the words, “Woodman, spare this tree. In remembrance of Mrs. J.S. Young, 1873-1907.” But Josepha Young had other ideas and remained at the helm until her death in April of 1911 at the age of 81. Read more about Young in the 2018 winter issue of McDonogh Magazine (page 34).
