Papers : 1759-1877.

Robert Nelles/Nellis, the son of Hendrick (Henry) William Nelles, was a descendant of a Huguenot family who had fled from France to Germany, then to England, and finally to the Mohawk Valley of New York in 1709. He served with his father in the Indian Department during the American Revolution and settled as a Loyalist in Upper Canada where Robert, his father and brothers were granted land in the Niagara District, and on the Grand River. He retired on half pay from the Indian Department and settled at Forty Mile Creek, the site of present-day Grimsby, Ontario. There he developed approximately 600 acres of land, erected a stone mansion, a store, and with his brothers, built and operated mills. For many years he held various civic offices, which included, member of the Legislative Assembly, town warden, justice of the peace, and during the War of 1812-1814, lieutenant-colonel and later colonel, of the 4th Regiment of Lincoln Militia. Robert Nelles was concerned that his sons should be well educated, and to this end he built a school at the Forty, and provided them with a further degree of education under the guidance of John Strachan and the Ridout family. Although he was raised a Lutheran in the German Palatinate culture of Tryon County, New York, he helped to build and support the Anglican church in Grimsby. His son, Abraham Nelles, became a Church of England clergyman and missionary to the Six Nations Indians, the descendants of the people his father and grandfather had fought beside during the American Revolution and the Seven Years War.