Johann Adam (Jung) Young UEL (1717 - 1790)

Born 17 May 1717 in Foxtown, Schoharie, New York

Ancestors

Husband of Catharine Elizabeth (Schremling) Young — married 1740 in New York

Descendants

Died 1790 at about age 72 in Seneca Township, Haldimand County, Upper Canada

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Biography

Adam (Jung) Young UEL served with Loyalists during the American Revolution.

Adam Young was a United Empire Loyalist.
UEL Status:Proven
Date: Undated

Johann Adam Jung, born May 17, 1717 and baptized by Rev. Kocherthal on June 6; child of Theobald and Maria Catharina Jung; sponsors: Johann Just Laux, Johann Adam Kopp, Catharina Frey.^[1]

Adam Young has been described as one of the first "un-American Americans." In his loyalty to the British in the Revolutionary War, he became a "royalist guerrilla fighter. Reviled as a traitor by one nation, he became a founding father of another."^[2]

He started out as a farmer and entrepreneur. In 1752, Adam (along with his father and brothers) obtained a patent for 14,000 acres along the south bank of the Mohawk River, about two miles from the Mohawk Indian village of Canajoharie. He would go on to acquire other property as well. By 1766, along with his farm, Adam owned a sawmill, a potash works and an Indian trading post. Along with being a farmer, Adam and his family appear to have been involved in the business of land speculation. He was probably one of the wealthiest residents of the area. Details of his extensive land holdings can be found in Dr. Faux' work, cited below.

The inhabitants of Tryon County were, to all appearance, among the most loyal and contented. Their representatives, Guy Johnson and Hendrick Frey, had never swerved from their allegiance. Governor Tryon visited the valley in 1772, and wrote rapturously of the evident prosperity and contentment of the people, “who were not less seemingly pleased with the presence of their Governor than he with them.” He reviewed the militia and reported that it exceeded 1,400 men under arms. The great proprietors and wealthy families here were Loyalists to a man. Besides the members of the Johnson family, the Bradts, Freys, Hares, Herkimers, Thompsons and Youngs, John Butler, Joseph Chew, John Dease, Robert Lottridge, Hendrick Nelles, Peter Ten Broeck, Alexander White, and many others, imperilled handsome estates, which in the end were confiscated.^[3]

When the Revolutionary War broke out and Adam sided with the Crown, he found himself imprisoned for eleven months in the gaol in Norwich, Connecticut. He was convicted by the local Committee of Safety of supplying "a party of absconding vagabonds who joined our Enemies". Upon his return to the Mohawk valley, his buildings were burned to the ground and his possessions were seized by the Patriots. At this point, Adam and his two youngest sons (David Young and Henry Young) fled to Oswego where they joined Butler's Rangers. He would achieve some measure of vengeance on the morning of September 17, 1778, when they would be part of the complement of 300 Rangers (accompanied by Joseph Brant and 152 Iroquois) that would attack the German Flatts settlement. The settlers had been forewarned and hid in the fort while the raiders torched 63 houses, 37 barns and 4 mills. According to the American Colonel Peter Bellinger, among the raiding party was Adam Young and his sons.^[4] An account of this raid can be found at The Attack on German Flatts. In the aftermath of this attack, an American "force from Schoharie advanced ... upon Oquaga and Unadilla. They burnt both those villages with the houses and mills of the Scottish loyalists in the vicinity. By this raid the Young family, which had already furnished Butler with two active officers, suffered severely in property."^[5]

In 1780, Adam, then 63 years of age, was given a discharge from Butler's Rangers in order to develop a farm on the west side of the Niagara River, to supply the garrison of Fort Niagara with food. On 25th August 1782, Colonel Butler took the first census of the settlement at Niagara. Altogether there were sixteen families, comprising 83 people living at Niagara, including Adam Young and McGregory Van Every. Thus Adam was one of the first settlers in the Niagara Peninsula, by 1783, at the age of 66, Adam had cleared 18 acres of land and had built a house and barn. He had five acres of corn, four acres of spring wheat, two horses, three cows, two young cattle, two calves and two pigs.^[6]

His farm was on Lot 27, immediately west of the "Rangers Barrick" and north of the Garrison Line on the west side of the Niagara River until this lot was confiscated by the government as Crown Land reserved for the defence of the mouth of the Niagara River. This property, Lot 27, that was first granted to Adam Young UE, is now in downtown Niagara-on-the Lake. Because Lot 27, Niagara Township, adjacent to the Rangers' Barracks, reverted back to the Crown, Adam Young UE, his wife, Catherine Elizabeth Schremling, and their two married sons, Sergeant Daniel Young UE and his wife, Elizabeth Windecker, and Private Henry Young UE and his wife, Phoebe Van Every, decided to join Adam Young's oldest son, Lieutenant John Young UE, married to Catherine Hill, on the Grand River in Haldimand County, John having received a tract of land approximately one square mile in size from his good friend Chief Joseph Brant. With the arrival of Adam Young UE, Daniel Young UE and Henry Young UE, and their wives, this land on the Grand River was increased to approximately nine square miles, extending three miles inland from the eastern banks of the river, south of the present-day hamlet of York, and north of the present-day village of Cayuga. The land in question became known as the Young Tract and is still marked on maps of the region today. Next door, Henry Nelles UE and his family settled on a similar sized tract of land, granted to them by Chief Joseph Brant, known as the Nelles Tract, and thus these two families, the Youngs and Nelles, became the first two white families to settle in Haldimand County.^[7]

Most of his lands in the US were confiscated by the state of New York, but he tried to salvage something of the situation by deeding the property at Youngsfield to his son in law, Joseph House, a Patriot supporter. Various family members would make sporadic attempts to obtain compensation for the lost land, without success, for nearly a century.

Adam is buried in the Young Tract Burying Ground, Seneca Township, Haldimand County, Ontario.

Sources

1. ↑ Book of Names, The Kocherthal Records, pg. 33.
2. ↑ Bruce Wilson, quoted in Adam Young (1717-1790) and Catherine Elizabeth Schremling (1720- 1798) by David Faux
3. ↑ The Story of Butler's Rangers, Ernest Cruikshank, 1893
4. ↑ Adam Young (1717-1790) and Catherine Elizabeth Schremling (1720-1798), Dr. David Faux
5. ↑ The Story of Butler's Rangers, pg. 54.
6. ↑ Adam Young, by Robert Collins McBride
7. ↑ Pte. Henry Young, by Robert Collins McBride

• Dr. David K. Faux: Descendants of Johannes Young, Generation 4.

• and Adam Young (1717-1790) and Catherine Elizabeth Schremling (1720-1798)

• The Story of Butler's Rangers by Ernest Cruikshank, 1893.

• Adam Young 1717-1790, by Robert Collins McBride, UE.

• Cited in Private Henry Young UE by Robert Collins McBride.

• The Young (Jung) Families of the Mohawk Valley 1710-1946

• Cited in The Jung (or young) Palatine Family, by Robert C. McBride, The Loyalist Gazette, September 2008.

• Muster Rolls for Butler's Rangers - 6th Company

• County of Haldimand by Rev. Robert Bertram Nelles, 1905.

• The Early History of Haldimand County, by Russell Harper, 1950.

• http://www.uelac.org/Loyalist-Info/detail.php?letter=y&line=16

Acknowledgments

Thanks to Dave Rutherford for starting this profile. Click the Changes tab for the details of contributions by Dave and others.