FAMILY CEMETERY OF THE YOUNG AND NELLES FAMILIES OF
HALDIMAND COUNTY, ONTARIO, CANADA
1974 When my maternal grandmother took ill, I visited her in the Hamilton, Ontario hospital where she was recuperating. Realizing that there is no time like the present, and not knowing much about her family history (other than they were locals), I took a paper towel from the dispenser to use as a recording device (I still have this item) and wrote down what my grandmother told me. She said that her father's mother was a YOUNG from Ryckman's Corners (now a part of Hamilton in the County of Wentworth which adjoins Haldimand County). I spent the next year researching the details of my connection with the YOUNG family and learned that grandmother's grandmother was very much a YOUNG - three of her grandparents had that surname (all first cousins). Realizing that biologically I was most strongly connected to my YOUNG ancestors I took a special interest in this branch of my family. Within a short time I had assembled documentary evidence (thanks largely to my grandmother's aunt who was in her 90s at the time) to allow me to became a member of the United Empire Loyalist's Association of Canada by virtue of my descent from Lt. John Young of the Six Nations Indian Department during the American Revolution. The latter's father, Adam Young, the family patriarch in Canada, served in Butler's Ranger's before being discharged by virtue of his age in order to set up a farm to help feed the British garrison at Ft. Niagara. Lt. John Young obtained a grant of land from the Six Nations Indians along the Grand River, and his father and brothers joined him there at the close of the War. This grant is known as the Young Tract (and can still be seen on modern County maps).
1975 While my family was quickly able to direct me to the burial places of all the generations of my YOUNG ancestors back to my great great great great grandparents at the Barton Stone Church Cemetery in Ryckman's Corners, and the more recent generations in Hamilton Cemetery, it was a mystery as to where the earliest members of the family were interred. I was "missing" the location of Abraham Young and his wife Eleanor Dennis, Abraham's father Lt. John Young and his wife Catharine Hill, and John's father and the family patriarch, Adam Young (whose wife Catharine Schremling I knew was buried in the Smith Cemetery at Ryckman's Corners since as a widow she resided with her son Sgt. Daniel Young of Butler's Rangers who pioneered in that area after leaving the Grand River in 1795). I am a descendant of both Lt. John and Sgt. Daniel (two sons of Adam and Catharine). I knew that the final resting place of my "missing" ancestors must be somewhere along the Grand River in Haldimand County, but exactly where - I did not know.
Historical Society members put me in touch with an authority on the history of the Young and Nelles families, Mary Nelles who resided in the house built by Capt. Henry William Nelles, the patriarch of the Nelles family of Haldimand County, and contemporary of Adam Young. She indicated that she had a picture of the Cemetery on the river flats and gave me a name of a Young living along the River, who in turn gave me directions as to how to find the Cemetery - but warned me that I wouldn't be able to see much as it was very overgrown. Search as I could I was unable to find anything that remotely resembled a cemetery. Mary Nelles said that at one time there were about 100 graves, many surrounded by metal fence enclosures, but that there was nothing left to mark the location. In the 1940s one Helen Nelles compiled the only known transcription of the inscriptions on the few headstones then legible; in the early 1940's a picture was taken of two Nelles descendants (see later) standing by the only stone left upright; and a newspaper clipping from 1 December 1948 reported that a descendant visiting from Vancouver found that "it had been plowed up and sown with grain, having been completely overgrown with weeds and brush. Oddly enough, the only stone left intact was that of the old pioneer, Major Hendrick Nelles, who died in 1791."
The story began to emerge that over the years the cemetery became very neglected. The last known burial in the Cemetery had taken place in 1925. Many of the tombstones were vandalized or knocked over by the occasional spring flood. This led a group of Nelles descendants in 1960s to remove the last standing stone, that of the family patriarch Capt. Henry William Nelles who died in 1791, to the churchyard of the nearby St. Johns Anglican Church where the stone was ultimately placed in a cairn to save this piece of family and County history. Unfortunately this had the effect of leaving the burying ground on the flats at the mercy of the then owner of the surrounding land, one McSorley, who then removed the remaining pieces of tombstones, placed them in a pit, and backfilled. He was then able to plow his land without the impediment and inconvenience of the Cemetery. Thus the Cemetery became part of a corn and soybean field and there was absolutely nothing to provide a hint as to where the Cemetery was located other than the knoll it was known to occupy. Family members and locals were outraged, but no one had any authority to stop McSorley from plowing over the graves of the ancestors of the Young and Nelles families. I was absolutely appalled at this situation, seeing it as one of the most disrespectful of acts that was surely morally reprehensible and likely illegal. Thus I set out to right a wrong. Little did I realize the 28 year struggle that lay ahead - I naively believed that I would just need to inform the proper authorities and the plowing would stop and the Cemetery would be returned to its rightful status.
