Franklin Knowles Young Chess Papers and Boston Chess Club Records

Franklin Knowles Young (1857-1931) was a chess enthusiast, writer, and inventor from Boston, Massachusetts. Throughout his life, Young played, taught, and wrote about chess. He was reportedly the New England Chess Champion during the 1880s, and he authored several books about chess strategies and analytics. He was also a student of military tactics and strategies, which informed his writing about chess. Young's books had a contemporary and retrospective reputation for being dense and difficult to understand, but he also was known as a kind and willing teacher to chess novices.

Outside of the chess world, he sometimes worked as a journalist, writing several well-received artices about battles in the Boer War in the early 1900s. Young was also interested in guns and weaponry, and he received patents related to firearms in the 1920s.

Chess remained one of his passions, and, near the end of his life, he taught chess to young players at the Young Men's Christian Union in Winthrop, Massachusetts, where he lived with his daughter.

Young's obituary in the Boston Evening Transcript concluded:

"Still teaching youth; still advising, he came to be a much-loved figure, this old gentleman—quite, serene, quizzical, humorous with a smiling glint always in the corner of his eye. He lived the game. He loved the game. He died playing it. Chess has lost a passioniate savant and lover."

In the late twentieth century and the early twenty-first century, the Boston-based Boylston Chess Club sponsored a Franklin K. Young Memorial chess tournament.

++++ Sources: Lennox F. Beach, "Franklin K. Young Dead," Boston Evening Transcript, Dec. 29, 1931, page 23.

Edward Winter, "Franklin Knowles Young," Chess History, Last updated April 3, 2025: https://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/young.html.

The Boston Chess Club was founded in 1857—although many of the original members had belonged to similar chess groups in previous years. The Club was incorporated under the laws of Massachusetts in 1888. The Club sponsored tournaments and promoted the game of chess in Boston and the surrounding region. The Boston Chess Club celebrated its 50th anniverary in 1907 and continued to sponsor tournaments and host prominent visiting players through the 1920s. The Club celebrated its 100th anniversary in 1957, but a Boston Globe article at the time noted that the card game bridge was played more often than chess at the Club. According to the Official Encyclopedia of Bridge, the Boston Chess Club dissolved in 1981.

+++ Sources: Constitution and By-Laws with lists of past and present members of the Boston Chess Club (Boston: 1894).

Lyman Burgess, "Chess Notes," Boston Globe, December 1, 1957, page A21.

"Boston Chess Club," Official Encyclopedia of Bridge,(7th edition) Brent Manley, editor, (Horn Lake, Mississippi: American Contract Bridge League, 2011), page 25.