Elzy P. Young was born about 1902. One undocumented source states that his middle name was Prescott. He left the orphan home on March 9, 1912, at the age of about eight, and went to live in the home of a man identified as Alex Kitchen, of Griswoldville, Georgia, which is in Jones County, not far from Macon. According to the 1910 census, Mr. Kitchen was either Alexander Kitchens, a 69-year-old single man who lived with his sister in Jones County; or (more likely) Alex Kitchens, who lived in nearby Dodge County with his wife and five children. Anecdotal information from the family indicates that Elzy ran away and joined the Army during World War I, lying about his age to get in, and that he died of pneumonia about 1919, which was at the time of the so-called “Spanish Flu” epidemic.
I found him in a list of persons buried at San Francisco National Cemetery, a veterans cemetery. He died on February 4, 1920, at about the age of 18. I also found a photograph of his gravestone on FindAGrave.com. I requested his death certificate from the State of California, but they could not locate it. I could find no other records of him. The Army would have attempted to notify his next of kin, which may have been his mother. I was unable to locate any photographs of him.
