The Revolutionary War was America's first civil war, in which brother fought against brother, father against son, friend against friend. So it was for Hendrick (Henry) Nelles, Adam Young and their families. Both men left homes, relatives, and considerable property in the Mohawk Valley of New York because they refused to take an oath of loyalty to the rebel cause. Both were mistreated as a result and fled to save themselves from persecution. Both found themselves penniless at the end of the war, only to find themselves rewarded by an old friend and colleague in the war, Joseph Brant.

Hendrick William Nelles was the grandson of Robert and Mary Nellesin, Huguenot refugees who emigrated to the New York colony around 1710 from Britain. Robert died on board but Mary and two sons, Johann William and Christian, and a daughter, Catherine, survived to move into the camps for Palatinate refugees on the Hudson River. Because there were so many refugees to feed, Governor Hunter was unable to provide sufficient assistance, and many refugees, including the Nelles family, left the camps to settle on land provided by Iroquois in the Schoharie area. Later the Nelles family moved to the Mohawk Valley, where there is still a town called Nelliston. One of the sons, Johann William Nelles, fought in the French and Indian War within a year of landing in America and his son Hendrick served under Sir William Johnson in the Indian Department. It was this connection that brought him into contact with Joseph Brant, who was a captain in the department.

By the onset of the Revolutionary War, Hendrick owned considerable property in the Mohawk Valley and had given the land for the Old Palatinate Church, which still stands. Hendrick remained in the Indian Department when war broke out so became a Loyalist. At the end of the war, his property in the Mohawk Valley was confiscated and he and his five sons found themselves penniless. They initially settled in the Niagara area but eventually found themselves on the Grand River. Governor Haldimand had given the Six Nations land along the river in return for the land lost in the Mohawk Valley. Brant, in the meantime, had become the leader of the Iroquois and seeing his friends in poverty had given them nine square miles of land on the north or east side of the river plus a small section on the opposite side, part of the Six Nations grant. There Hendrick, by now known as Captain Henry, settled with his wife and five sons: Robert, Abraham, William, Warner, and John.

The Nelles family later received Loyalist grants in the Grimsby area and, after Henry's death in 1891, Robert moved there, later followed by William and Abraham. Warner stayed on the Nelles Tract and John settled on the land on the other side of the Grand River. The houses that Warner and William built oin the Grand River still stand. William's house, once called the Red House for the colour of the exterior (but now white), is near the junction of Young Road and Haldimand Road 54. Warner's house is further south, near the junction of Haldimand Road 9 (Nelles Road) and Haldimand Road 54.

William Nelles House (The Red House)

Warner Nelles House

The Nelles grant is just north of the future site of the village of York. That site was the farm of a carpenter named George Cunningham. There is a connection between Cunningham and the Nelles family through Cunningham's wife.

Mary Sitts or Maria Sitz was the daughter of German immigrants in New York. When the Revolutionary War broke out, her family sided with the rebels. One day, when the men were away, the Sitts home was attacked by Mississaugas, who killed most of the family but spared 8-year-old Mary. She became the daughter of a chief and his medicine-woman wife. Being a migratory people, the Mississaugas had no fixed home but lived in the Niagara area. When they ceded this land to the British, they moved to the area on the Grand River where Fergus was to be built. So Mary became the possibly first white woman on the Grand River.

In 1787, Mary was in Richard Beasley's store in Hamilton and was noticed by Henry Nelles, who contacted his friend Joseph Brant to help him to retrieve her from the Mississaugas. She was fifteen years old when she moved to the Nelles tract. A few years later, she married Henry's son William in an Indian ceremony and later had two children, Abraham and Nancy. For some reason, by 1895, her marriage was set aside. It seems to have been an amicable split and it may be that William decided to move to Grimsby and Mary did not want to go with him. She went to live with the Mohawks at their village at what became Brantford and became accepted as one of them. There she came into contact again with George Cunningham, whom she had met when he was building a house for William. She later married Cunningham, who petitioned Brant for some land on Mary's behalf. She was given some land immediately south of the Nelles tract and that became Cunningham's farm. For a few years, Mary and George lived on the farm but by 1802, they had moved to the Oakland area south of Brantford. The children, Nancy and Abraham, although adopted by Cunningham, retained their Nelles surnames. Nancy Nelles married Dr. David Duncombe, pioneer doctor and brother of the famous Dr. Charles Duncombe.

Johann Adam Jung, who later became Adam Young, was the son of Palatinate Germans who emigrated to America in 1709. Like the Nelles family, the Jungs found themselves in the Palatinate camps on the Hudson River, and, again like the Nelleses, moved to Schoharie and then to the Mohawk Valley. They settled near what is now St Johnsville. Adam was a smart businessman and soon had large land holdings in the Mohawk Valley. He was also a soldier, being a captain in charge of a company at Sir William Johnson's capture of Fort Niagara in 1759. In 1768, he was a captain if the German Flats militia.

When the revolution broke out, Young condemned it and for his pains was imprisoned for eleven months. Soon after his release in 1778, his house was burned down and his wife thrown into jail. Adam and his two younger sons, Henry and David, managed to escape and enlisted in Butler's Rangers, along with his other sons, Lieutenant John and Sergeant Daniel. Adam Young was one of those Rangers, such as Peter Secord, who were allowed to move across the Niagara River to settle in 1780. He was then 63 years old. By 1783, he had cleared 18 acres and had a house and a barn.

Like his old neighbour and friend Hendrick Nelles, Young received a grant of nine square miles on the Grand River just south of the Nelles Tract. Due to the curve of the river, the two tracts were separated by a triangular piece of land that was later called the Fishcarrier Tract after Peter Fishcarrier, a Cayuga chief who lived there.

Adam Young moved to his land on the Grand and lived there until his death in 1790. South of the village of York on Haldimand Road 54, there is a marker describing the Young family. Behind the marker is a field where Adam Young, Hendrick Nelles, and many of their families are buried. Unfortunately, their graves have been desecrated in the years that have passed and there is little to see.

Marker describing the Young Family