b. February 20, 1798, in Fayette County, Kentucky; d. November 28, 1861, in Washington, D.C. Young studied law at Forest Hill Academy in Jessamine County, Kentucky, and gained admission to the Kentucky bar in 1816. One year later, he moved to Jonesboro, Illinois, and began a law practice there. In 1820, voters elected him to represent Union County in the state legislature. In 1825, the legislature appointed Young as judge of the Third Judicial Circuit. The state legislature created the Fifth Judicial Circuit in 1829 and assigned Young to be the judge of the new circuit, composed of all of the state north of the Illinois River. He moved from Jonesboro to Quincy, Illinois, to serve the new circuit more effectively. In 1836, the general assembly elected Young to a six-year term in the U.S. Senate as a Democrat. At the end of his senate term in 1843, the general assembly elected Young as an associate justice in the Illinois Supreme Court upon the resignation of Theophilus W. Smith. Abraham Lincoln appeared before Richard Young in the Illinois Supreme Court in seventy-one legal cases. Young resigned from the bench in 1847 when President James K. Polk appointed him as the commissioner of the General Land Office in Washington, DC, replacing James Shields. Young served as commissioner until June 1849, when the new Whig President Zachary Taylor replaced him. Abraham Lincoln sought the appointment to replace Young, but President Taylor appointed Justin Butterfield to the post. From 1850 to 1851, Young served as a clerk in the U.S. House of Representatives, before returning to the practice of law in Washington, D.C. He spent his final years in an insane asylum.