Levi Edgar Young
Levi Edgar Young was a General Authority of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints.
Young was born on February 2, 1874, in Salt Lake City, Utah Territory. He graduated from the University of Utah in 1895, where he later taught history. He was dean of the Department of Western History at the university for ten years. He was promoted in 1936 to head of the political science department. He also taught at the Lowell school in Salt Lake City and LDS College. In 1910 he earned a master’s degree in history from Columbia University and later studied at Harvard University. He retired from the university in 1939.
Young served as a full-time missionary in Germany, Austria, and Switzerland from 1901 to 1904. For the last two years of his mission, he served as president of the Swiss-Austrian Mission. He served on the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association general board from 1913 to 1929. He presided over the Temple Square Mission from 1922 to 1934 and the New England States Mission from 1939 to 1942. He was ordained to the office of a Seventy in 1897 and served in the First Council of the Seventy from 1909. He became the senior president of the Seventy in 1941, serving until his death on December 13, 1963.
He and his wife, Valeria Brinton, had three children. He was the grandson of Joseph Young, an elder brother of Brigham Young.
He published more than 24 historical articles and five books, and may have publicized the existence of the 1832 account of Joseph Smith’s First Vision, which is archived in a letterbook in the Church historian’s office and part of the Joseph Smith Papers.[1]
