Dr. Anne Austin Young was one of the first female physicians to practice medicine in Anderson County. Born in Cross Hill South Carolina, she graduated high school in 1906 at the age of 14 and entered Presbyterian College that same year. She graduated at the top of her class in 1910 and promptly entered nurses’ training at the University of Maryland. After completing her training, she returned to South Carolina and taught school in a one-room schoolhouse near Cross Hill to earn money to attend medical school. Young entered the Woman’s Medical College of Pennsylvania in 1911, where she earned a scholarship and also worked as a lab assistant and typist to pay her way through school.

She graduated in 1915 with the highest scholastic average in her class. Young interned at the Women’s Hospital in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, before returning to South Carolina where she passed the South Carolina State Medical Exam with the highest grade in the history of the state. In Columbia, she joined the staff of the South Carolina Hospital for the Insane where she supervised the treatment of over six hundred female patients. While there, she developed innovative occupational therapy for female patients, even funding the program with her own funds at the onset. After her marriage to Dr. Charles Young in 1918, the two set up practice in Anderson where Dr. Anne Young worked as an obstetrician. During a career that spanned sixty-three years, Dr. Young delivered over 10,000 babies. In addition to her work as an obstetrician-gynecologist, Young also practiced as a surgeon and psychiatrist. In recognition of her accomplishments, she was inducted into the South Carolina Hall of Fame in 1981.