Colonial Despatches

Cecilia Young had many familial connections in the colonies of British Columbia and Vancouver Island. She was the niece of Governor James Douglas, and he funded some of her education and voyage to the colonies in 1850.1 Cecilia’s father abandoned her and her mother in Demerara, and her mother remarried David Cameron, the controversial first chief justice of the Supreme Court of Vancouver Island.2 Young was the wife of Sir William Alexander George Young, who had a career in colonial administration and they had three sons and three daughters together. The Young family left British Columbia on 1 June 1869.3

According to this despatch, Cecilia owned the property known as Belmont on Fisgard Island. She sold the property for £150 in 1859, but there were several issues in the process that largely involved the formalities necessary for passing a married woman's Estate. The estate originally belonged to her adopted father, Cameron.5

• 1. W. Kaye Lamb, Some Notes on the Douglas Family, in The British Columbia Historical Quarterly (Victoria: Archives of British Columbia, 1953), January-April, 47.
• 2. William R. Sampson, Cameron, David, Dictionary of Canadian Biography.
• 3. James E. Hendrickson, Young, Sir William Alexander George, Dictionary of Canadian Biography.
• 4. W.Kaye Lamb, Some Notes on the Douglas Family, The British Columbia Historical Quaterly, 17 (1953): 46.
• 5. William R. Sampson, Cameron, David, Dictionary of Canadian Biography.