Levi E. Young

Who was Levi E. Young?

Levi Edgar Young was a general authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints. He was one of the seven presidents of the Seventy from 1909 until his death.

Young was born in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory, the son of LDS Church general authority Seymour B. Young and grandson of Joseph Young. Levi Young graduated from the University of Utah in 1895, and later became a faculty member at the same school, teaching history. Later in his life, he would do graduate studies at Harvard University and Columbia University and earned an M.A. and Ph.D. in history from Columbia.

From 1901 to 1904, Young served as a Mormon missionary in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. For the last two years of his mission, he was the president of the Swiss–Austrian Mission of the church.

Of his life spent in both clerical and academic pursuits, J. Golden Kimball, in good humor, said of Young: "That little shrimp. He goes around here carrying water on both shoulders, and he's afraid to lean one way orthe other for fear of spilling some of it."

When George Reynolds died in 1909, Young was selected to take his place in the First Council of the Seventy.