Unfortunately, it was extremely difficult to find information about Jonestown survivor, Carolyn Young. What we do know is that she was born on September 1st, 1900, and was 78 at the time of the Jonestown suicides. It is unknown how Carolyn survived the massacre but it could be speculated that she may have been knocked out in the medical ward or she may have been in Georgetown at the time like some other survivors were. It is safe to say that Carolyn is likely deceased now because of her age at the time of the suicides but there is no documentation explicitly saying so.
Carolyn Young and other survivors took a flight from Guyana to the United States on November 29th, 1978. They landed at the John F. Kennedy International Airport in Queens, New York at 6:35 pm. Following this, the FBI conducted interviews with the survivors before their flights back to California. RYMUR document 610 states that there was an interview conducted with Carolyn Young but I could not find any evidence, other than this, of the interview. The documented interview may have been scrapped because Young might not have provided any useful information to the FBI. We do know from RYMUR document 603 that Carolyn took a flight from New York to Los Angeles later that day. But there is little to no evidence of the rest of Carolyn’s life in the United States. It is likely that she dissolved back into American life and tried to heal from the extremely traumatic tragedy at Jonestown.
There is no evidence of how Carolyn got involved with the Peoples Temple, or that she had any family members involved with the Temple, or when she arrived in Jonestown. But it is evident that she arrived in Jonestown before February 1978 because there is documentation of her presence at a White Night drill on February 16th, 1978. At this specific White Night, there was talk about fascists coming to get them with their goal being to sabotage the socialist paradise that was Jonestown.
From a Law Office Report dated July 25th, 1978, it seems as though Carolyn Young tried to sign her house over to the Peoples Temple (as many other members did when they started living communally in Ukiah, California) but there were problems with the transfer because Carolyn initially signed the documentation to her house as ‘Carol Ann Smith’ but when she tried to sign it over to the Temple she signed as ‘Carol Ann Young.’ In a similar sense, the FBI found 656 uncashed Social Security checks in Jonestown. After doing some research, the FBI determined that there were about 203 members of the Temple who were signing their Social Security Checks over to Jones. But, the FBI found that Carolyn was one of the eighteen seniors in Jonestown who either was not getting Social Security Benefits or was not handing over their checks to Jones. This was true in both the United States and Guyana.
Law office report 42, 7/25/78. Alternative Considerations of Jonestown Peoples Temple. (n.d.). Retrieved December 13, 2022, from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=114038
McGehee, F. M. (n.d.). Was there Social Security Fraud in Jonestown? A special report. Alternative Considerations of Jonestown Peoples Temple. Retrieved December 13, 2022, from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=32943
Q641 summary. Alternative Considerations of Jonestown Peoples Temple. (n.d.). Retrieved December 13, 2022, from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=28219
Serial 603. Alternative Considerations of Jonestown Peoples Temple. (n.d.). Retrieved December 13, 2022, from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=88515
Serial 610. Alternative Considerations of Jonestown Peoples Temple. (n.d.). Retrieved December 13, 2022, from https://jonestown.sdsu.edu/?page_id=88530