Painter and illustrator Pauline Young was born Pauline Adams on May 25, 1905, in Lexington, Kentucky. Her family relocated to Detroit, Michigan soon thereafter, where Young attended grade school. She then returned to Kentucky to attend the University of Kentucky, where she was a member of the Sigma Beta Upsilon sorority and was Assistant Art Editor of the school paper, and graduated with an AB in Arts and Sciences in 1928. That same year she married fellow University of Kentucky graduate David Marion Young, and in 1935 they started a family.

In the early 1940s Pauline worked as the advertising manager for the Paintsville Herald throughout the 1940s and '50s. She continued to work on her own art, focusing primarily on portraits and landscapes in oil painting, and exhibited her art throughout the state, including at the University of Kentucky Art Gallery. The Youngs would ultimately settle in St. Paul, Virginia in 1962, where Pauline taught art privately and continued exhibiting, including in Detroit at the Museum of Fine Arts. She co-published of The Clinch Valley Times from 1974 until her death on September 17, 1987.

Information sourced from the Kingsport Times-News (TN) (obituary), Fri., Sep. 18, 1987; as well as other online sources.