Andrew Young was born in 1861 in Ramsay, Lanark County, Ontario.

He was a mining engineer. He attended the Almonte High School in Ontario and the Science and Engineering Department of McGill University. After graduating with a degree of B.Sc., he began to work as a mining engineer and assayist in Montana, USA. As his health started to fail, he returned to Canada, where he died on April 16, 1895, in Ramsay, Lanark County, Ontario.

Albert Adams Young was born on May 10, 1836, in Hanover, New Hampshire.

He was a clergyman and scientist. He graduated from Dartmouth College (M.A., 1856) and Andover Theological Seminary in 1861. He was ordained in 1863 and entered the ministry, holding pastorates in several places in Wisconsin, Iowa, and Illinois. As a boy, he helped keep the weather records at Dartmouth College observatory, and his interest in the weather and the various problems of meteorology never waned. His retirement from the ministry gave him more leisure for studying weather, working out various graphs and averages, and testifying in court as to weather conditions. From 1888 to 1916, he served as a cooperative observer for the Weather Bureau at Winona Lake.

In 1865, he married Mary Sewall (1833-1917). They had two daughters, Elizabeth A. Young, who was the head of the Department of Geography at Winona College and Anna S. Young, the head of the Department of Astronomy and director of the observatory at Mout Holyoke College. Young died on January 7, 1916, in Winona Lake, Indiana.

The McGill branch of the Y.M.C.A. (Young Men's Christian Association) was housed in Strathcona Hall. Prominent among the membership of the Ladies' Auxiliary were the wives of McGill faculty members.