Nicholas E. Young’s Birthplace and Childhood Home
This article was written by David Pietrusza
This article was published in The Empire State of Baseball (SABR 19, 1989)
Very few sites exist where one may actually visit the birthplace of a notable baseball figure. The Babe Ruth home in Baltimore comes readily to mind, but that’s about it.
There is another exception — the birthplace and childhood home of the National League’s first secretary-treasurer (1876-1902) and its fourth president (1884-1902), Nicholas E. “Uncle Nick” Young, in the village of Fort Johnson, N.Y.
The reason the site is open to the public has nothing to do with Nick Young, however, and in fact there is no mention of him there. Fort Johnson (what the home as well as the village is called) was an outpost in the colonial trading empire of Sir William Johnson. Built in 1743, it was the scene of many conferences with the Iroquois nation as Sir William and his son, Sir John, presided over vast land holdings and served as the King’s superintendent of Indian Affairs.
Nick Young was one of 15 children of Almarin Young, a wealthy New York City importer of Swiss watches. The elder Young had purchased Fort Johnson several decades after the American Revolution and the resultant demise of the Johnson clan. He moved to Fort Johnson for reasons of health, operating a saw mill and grain elevator and owning considerable property in nearby Amsterdam.
In 1857, Almarin Young underwent some financial hard times, but was rescued when Abraham Lincoln appointed him Amsterdam Postmaster, a post he held for 17 years.
Nick Young was born at Fort Johnson in 1840 and it was at Amsterdam, according to an 1880s account, “where his first experience in ball-playing was gained, and he attained a prominent position as a cricketer.”
In 1892, a youthful associate wrote: “In those days [cricket] was the popular game, and as playfellows together about the wickets our recollection of Nick are of the pleasantest. Even then his rulings as umpire decided many a boyish wrangle that no doubt would have ended with a battered nose or blackened eye if Nick had not quietly and decidedly pointed out the proper adjustment of the difficulty.”
He enlisted early for service in the Civil War, after which he took an accounting post with the Treasury Department in Washington, D.C. In 1867, he helped organize and played right field for that city’s Olympic ballclub, and in 1871 he suggested the founding of the National Association and was elected its secretary. He managed the NA’s Washington, Baltimore and Boston ballclubs and even umpired for that circuit.
During Young’s tenure as national League chief executive, innumerable rule changes occurred, and the National League overcame the twin challenges of the Players’ League and the American Association.
Nick Young died on Oct. 31, 1916.
Fort Johnson is maintained by the Montgomery County Historical Society and is open to the public from May through October. It is located three miles west of Amsterdam on New York State Route 5 where that highway meets Route 67.