The Nichols Families in America

Leon N. Nichols
1919
 FOREWORD
In all ages and among all peoples the family has been the
essential factor in society; from the family to the clan, and,
finally, the community, which, in its general aspect, is merely a
-composite family whose interdependence is undeniable. By
family we · mean the more prominent name groups which are,
by special virile characteristics, distinguished among their neigh-
bors as occupying a dominant position in the affairs and councils
of the community.
Among such groups, the Nichols family has occupied no mean
rank, and the purpose of this publication is to arouse and stimulate
the collection of historical material about the variuus Nichols
families in America and their British ancestors. The reasons
for doingthis are threefold :
First, there have been an unusual number of conspicuous and
capable people in America bearing this family name.
Second, there has been so little material published about the
va:rious lines that no one knows much of the early relationships.
The families that have migrated the least seem to have known
most about the relationships, but even this has been very little.
Third, there are certain persistent qualities that show in many
branches of the family. This fact has created a desire to know
the sources of the power that has been productive of such stability,
energy and gentleness as has been notable in the family.
It is intended to show in the future numbers of this publication
fue early American Nichols lines, their location, their activities,
and the relationships to each other. Only a little of this is ready,
but the sources of the material are known. It is only necessary
to devote a certain amount of intelligent effort in collecting and
compiling data to produce results that many would like to have
and that the scholar would prize as of definite historical value.
It is intended, also, to show from what localities the first
American Nichols settlers emigrated, and not only to trace their
geographical wanderings, but also to discover the sources of
power in generations of strong men in all parts of the country.
We propose to study the beginnings of the name in Great
Britain, connecting there, if possible, the various American lines
that have no connection with each other this side of the Atlantic.
This can, in some cases no doubt, be done in the first or second
generation back in Great Britain.
It is also our intention to publish genealogical lines of Nichols
families down to the living generations so that every Nichols
who belongs to a line that is successfully worked out in this way
may know what sort of people were his Nichols forbears.
Finally, it will be of much value to give biographical sketches
of many of the more notable members of the family.
As for illustrations of portraits, old homes and historic family
scenes, that will depend upon the support given to the periodical,
both in intellectual and financial ways.
It will also be necessary to have members of the family from
all over America send in their line of descent, giving also brothers,
sisters, parents, uncles and aunts, grandparents, with dates, homes
and occupations so far as known. This will open up a system of
correspondence that we cannot take up until we know if there
is to be a response on the financial side.
As the editor expects to conduct the research, genealogical
correspondence and compilation, he does not desire to act as
Treasurer. Mr. E. M. Nichols of Philadelphia has been inter-
ested enough in the matter to furnish the funds for this issue,
and will gladly receive correspondence in regard to future
finances as Treasurer, until more permanent arrangements can
be perfected by those of the family who will naturally be most
interested. ·
It is earnestly hoped that those of the family who feel that
they can afford it, will take up the matter of firiance with the
Treasurer at an early date, in order that plans may be made for
future work.
It is also necessary to have interest in the work shown in the ,
form of individual subscriptions. We expect the periodical \vill
be a quarterly at two dollars a year. Please say if you will sub-
scribe but do not send money at present, as we only wish to
know how much support we are to receive.

LEON NELSON NICHOLS

of the New York Public Library
Home address: rn86 Amsterdam Ave., New York City.
Business address: 476 Fifth Avenue.
January, 1919
2
 ORIGINS OF THE NICHOLS FAMILY
Interest in the history of a family like ours rests largely upon
the fact that centuries of British and American culture have
been so thorough in the training of their men and women that a
large number of them in each century have been unusually
capable factors in its civilization. It is not a new thing to
find men of the Nichols name as large factors in the things they
have to do, and influential with the men of their generations.
When we find a Nichols who knows how to do things unusually
well and does them, we are not surprised. The genealogist and
ethnologist, though, wonder if those various Nichols men were
related and what was the source of their power.
The twentieth and nineteenth centuries had a host of the
family wlio were large factors in British arid American civiliza-
tion. But when we look into the activities of the eighteenth and
seventeenth centuries we see the name there in about the same
proportional importance. Back in the sixteenth and fifteenth
centuries; where biographical data is quite meagre, we still find
men by the name of Nichols doing important things in British
life. Earlier than this, our researches carry us into the origins
of the family and the beginnings of the name Nicol. The most
interesting items of Nichols origins were worked out by the
editor during 1910-1913, in connection with material found
mainly in the New York Public Library. It was surprising that
Pym Yeatman, the English genealogist and local historian, did
not see what he was doing for Nichols genealogy while he was
collecting and examining the immense amount of Norman and
early English manuscripts that were digested and incorporated
into his two works, The Feudal History of the County of Derby
(9 vols., 1886-1907), and the large folio volume of the House
of Arundel (London, 1882). In the latter work he saw the
connection for those great political families of England, Albini,
Montgomery, Fitzalan, and Howard. But· what is equally
important was that the very name most often repeated of the
earliest ancestors of these great families, was the name that
became our family name in two distinct districts of Great Britain.
The name began in the tenth century in N ormanciy, according
3
to Yeatman's studies, where we find Nigel or Neel as the lord
or Viscount of the Cotentin. The Cotentin is that peninsula
on the northern side of France and in Normandy that extends
out into the Channel toward the south coast of England. It is
now in the Department of the Manche whose largest town is
Cherbourg.
In the ninth century this peninsula was ruled by the Vis-
counts of the Cotentin, who gave allegiance to the Dukes of
Normandy. The first of these Viscounts was Richard, an own
cousin of Rollo, the first Duke of Normandy. Their grandfather,
Euslin Glumru, was one of the great Norse vikings and Jarl of
Upland or earl over a large area of eastern Norway. In the
days when the Norse were carrying their raids to all the western
European shores, and substituting authority and energy for
anarchy and degenerate social life, then it was that Rollo made his
conquest along the French coast and peopled it with a hardy and
energetic race that set a new pace for the development of civili-
zation. Rollo's own cousin, Richard, established himself in
possession of the Cotentin and the Channel Islands. Richard's
son, Nigel or Neel, succeeded as the second Viscount, and thus
began a name that has been familiar in British and American life
in the succeeding centuries.
These early Viscounts became Christianized and adopted other
phases of the higher culture of France. They gave in turn a
greater energy and a clearer vision of the vital things needed in
their century. So enthusiastic was their Christianity that the
great castle they built near the Douve River was named Saint
Sauveur (Holy Saviour). The ruins of this earliest architecture
of the family may yet- be seen.
The French form of the name was Neel, pronounced as two
syllables. The Norman form of Nigel was pronounced with a
weak g, like y or ch, as though spelled N eeyell or N echel, which
was easily changed in England to Nichol. Placing a y in Neel
we get the transition form N eyel, that shows the probable pro-
nunciation of the name of this early Viscount. It is possible
that some of the relatives of Nigel I had been in the Norse occu-
pation of Dublin and eastern Ireland, for Neil was one of the
Norman-Irish leaders about the time that Rollo had come down
upon France. That is one of the theories of the source of the
name.
4
 It had been roughly surmised by some of the philologists that
the source of the name Nicol was Nicholas, a name that had
become popular from Saint Nicholas, the Greek Bishop and later
the patron saint of Russia. The Nicholas family of England
undoubtedly traces its name to the given name Nicholas; but
it is very clear from old English documents that there was never
any doubt that the people always understood that Nicholas and
Nicol were two different and distinct given names. Out of
these have grown the two family names. Ours is historically
traceable to French Neel; and also to Norse Njal. There is a
mythological pedigree of Viscount Nigel I back in Scandinavia
through the Norse sagas, but no form of his name, Nigel, Nicol,
Neel, or Njal, appears among his ancestors.
Roger, the son of Nigel I, who succeeded his father as Vis-
count; named his son and successor Neel or Nigel, and he was
· -the seconcl of the name known to history. Nigel II died in 1045,
leaving three sons, Nigel, Richard and Mauger. The oldest
became Viscount Nigel III. He had a stormy reign, beginning,
as he did, with the leadership of the army that refused to
acknowledge vVilliam the Bastard as a rightful heir to the Duke-
dom of Normandy. In the bloody battle of Val-es-Dunes, Wil-
liam had the support of the King of France, and the Cotentin
forces were finally routed. Nigel III went into exile for a time,
at least, and it is likely that he never came to his power as
Viscount again. Duke William lived down his title of Bastard
in the greater title of William the Conqueror, won in 1066, when
the Battle of Hastings brought him to the throne of a weakening
and vacillating England. William was not only a giant in figure,
but a remarkable military general and organizer of the newer
England. There were at least three sons of Nigel III, _Nigel,
William and Roger, all of whom bore the appendage of "le
Viscount" to their names. It seems, with this profusion of
viscounts, without noting of what country they were viscounts,
that it was but an empty title given to all the men of the family.
It is likely that when Nigel III was exiled, the real viscounty
of St. Sauveur was conferred upon Eudes, the son of his brother
Richard ( called Thurstan Haldrup) . Eudes was certainly more
than "le Viscount," for he ruled somewhere in Normandy and
was of St. Sauveur.
The three sons of Nigel III, Nigel, William and Roger, were

5
probably of the town of Aubigny or Albini in the Cotentin when
they became important friends of Duke William in his English
conquests. William, doubtless this second son of Nigel III, was
Pincerna to King William, a position of such a personal nature
as to bring him into intimate relations with the Conqueror, for
the duties of his office seem to have been something of the nature
of a royal butler, perhaps the equivalent of Commissary General
for the invading army. As William de Albini, the documents of
the period show him to have been a very important personage.
William de Albini had two sons : Roger d'I vri, the father of
Rualoc of Dol in France; and Nicol de Albini, the hero of the
battle of Tinchbray in I 106. Roger de Albini, the third son of
Nigel III, is clearly shown by Pym Y eatman's researches to
have been the father of the second William de Albini, from whom
sprang the great Albini family in England and · the Earls of
Arundel.
Yeatman passes lightly over the oldest son of Nigel III. How-
ever, this notable ancestor, Nicol de Albini, led one wing of the
Conqueror's army at the battle of Hastings, and was showered
with honors and lands by the Conqueror. The Domesday Book,
that census of Norman ownership of lands in England, shows
that the Nicols were well rewarded, for they were immense land
owners. Nicol de Albini made Cainhoe in Bedfordshire his
seat, and was therefore Lord or Baron of Cainhoe. Yeatman
failed to note the importance of his discovery that the Nicols
de Albini, the Neels "les Viscounts,'' the Viscounts of St.
Sauveur or the Cotentin, were identical and were also the
Lords of Cainhoe, and as such were the founders of the later
families named Nicholl and Nichols.
Later writers have spelled the name of this first Lord of Cain-
hoe Nicholas d'Albini, but the justification rests only upon the
Latinizing of Nicol into Nicolus, inserting an h, and changing
the de to modern French d'. These changes often seem justified
considering the lack of uniformity in spelling in those early cen-
turies. An intelligent study of the names brought Yeatman to
the decision that the name was Nicol, not Nicholas, and he was
doubtless correct. Yeatman's failure to link the great Nicol de
Albini and the Lords of Cainhoe with the later families of Nicholl
and Nichols, is accounted for by his absorbing interest in his
discoveries regarding the origin of the Albinis.
6
 Nicol de Albini was one of the military leaders to rid England
of invaders. In 1074 the Normans and English met a Norse host
under a Canute of Norway (not King Canute) and defeated
the Norse fleet off Cardiff along the South Wales coast. But
Neel de St. Sauveur, our first Lord of Cainhoe, fell at this naval
victory. His remains were taken back to Normandy.
The second Lord of Cainhoe was probably the oldest son of
the first Lord, and he bore the same name, Nicol de Albini. He,
too, had extensive lordships or baronies in England. It was
during his possession of them that the Domesday Survey was
made in 1086, that showed the wealth of the property of the Lords
of Cainhoe. The internal strife in South Wales brought a Nor-
man-English army in 1092 to the assistance of one of the Welsh
armies in the civil conflict for the regal supremacy of South
Wales. But this time the Normans and their allies were defeated
.. in upper Glamorgan, and the young Lord of Cainhoe was killed.
Among the children of the second Nicol of Cainhoe, there are
five sons known: first, the heir to the lordship, another Nicol de
Albini; then sons William, Ithel, Henry, and Roger de Mowbray.
When Nicol, th'e third Lord of Cainhoe, died in II28 or u29
without issue, the titles .went to Robert the son of his brother
William. William probably died before Nicol, but if he ever
succeeded to Cainhoe, he could not have held it long, as Robert
was Lord of Cainhoe soon after Nicol's death. This Robert of
Cainhoe founded the Priory of Beaulieu in Hereford, near South
Wales. Then followed Robert's son Robert in II93, and after
him, his son Robert who died in infancy, leaving great baronies
to be divided among his three sisters, Isabel, Joan, and Asselina.
Isabel, wife of William de Hocton, took Cainhoe, Cloprill,
Ampthill, Melbroke, and some other lands, mainly in Bedfordshire.
William de Hocton assumed the name of William de Albini
from his wife's possessions. He died about 1264 and their son
Simon de Albini inherited all of his parent's manors. He died
without issue about 1307, thus ending the Lords of Cainhoe.
His sisters disposed of the property, how and to whom, we do
not know; but the new owners were without official title or rank
presumably. Here, probably, are the unsettled links between
these early Nicols and the later Nichols families that flourished
in the immediate vicinity in later centuries.
Over a century and a half later are found indefinite references
7
to a Nicholls family at Ampthill, the nearest possession of Cain-
hoe, about five miles to the northwest. It seems to have grown
in importance during the period of great industrial development
in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The most definite thing
we know of the Nicholls family in Ampthill during the sixteenth
century was that William Nicholls, the Dean of Chester ( died
1657) and his two older brothers, Francis ( died 1624) and
Anthony, were known as of London, and were heirs through
their father, Anthony Nicholls of London, to property of their
grandfather, Thomas Nicholls of Ampthill. This Thomas
Nicholls was the son of Robert Nicholl of London (and perhaps
of Ampthill), who died in r 548. Here, then, is a gap of over
a century and a half from the death of Simon de Albini, about
1307, to the birth of Robert Nicholl of London. Francis Nicholls
of Ampthill, who died in 1624, was the father of four sons,
Edward, Francis, William and Richard. The youngest became
the famous Colonel Richard Nicolls, the first English Governor
chosen after the creation of the Colony of New Yark, and the
representative of the Duke of York. The Governor was not
married and it has been supposed that his three brothers died
without issue. Attempts have been made to identify the Gov-
ernor's brother Francis with the Francis Nichols who died at
Stratford, Connecticut, in 1650, the ancestor of a large and
notable American family. But this conflicts with the statement
that Francis, the Governor's brother, voluntarily exiled himself
from England because of his royalist sympathies and died in
Paris or at the Hague, without issue.
Further away from Cainhoe than Ampthill, but only about
forty miles southwest in the adjoining County bf Oxford, there
lived at Islip in the fifteenth century, a John Nicoll, also called
of London. We know his mother's name, Anneis, but not his
father's. John Nicoll died in 1478. Eleven years earlier, a John
Nicholls, also of London and Islip, died, possibly the father of
John who died in 1478. So far, we have no connecting of these
Johns with the earlier Nicols at Cainhoe a century before. We
know nothing of their ancestry. It looks as though they were
descended from the great Nicol de Albinis, but in which genera-
tion they broke off from the Lords of Cainhoe, cannot be told,
and we are not sure even of that. The prominence of the name
Nicol in that whole countryside may have brought out unrelated
8
 ·boys bearing the given names of Nicol, so that when family
names became established in the thirteenth or fourteenth cen-
turies, some other virile lines, not descendants of the Albinis,
may have transformed their oft repeated names of Nicol to the
family names of Nichols and Nicoll. Families alter their eco-
nomic conditions with the changing centuries, but quality is apt
to be passed on to some line, even if other lines lose quality.
We do not know that any branch from Nicol de Albini degen-
erated, but we do know that in the senior line at Cainhoe the
descent passed to the female issue in two centuries. What the
other Nicols were doing in midland England in those centuries
is yet to be learned.
Descendants of John Nichols of Islip lived at Willen in North-
amptonshire in the following century, the sixteenth. Willen is
only about fifteen miles westerly from Cainhoe, and the Lords
of Cainhoe held land in East Willen. This would indeed form
the link, if it can be shown that the Islip line had been holding
- East Wrllen from a younger son of a Nicol de Albini. The line
from John Nichols of Islip is traceable for six generations to
Matthias Nicoll, the first Secretary of the English Colony of
New York and compiler of the Duke's Laws. He died in 1687
and the family became established on Long Island, where they
named their place Islip. This family is well known in New York
in this generation, being represented by men of unusual ability.
To the east of Cainhoe, probably not over thirty miles away,
at Walden in Essex, there lived before 1450, perhaps as early
as 1400, John Nichole. He was the ancestor of a Nicholl line
traceable over two centuries, and probably ancestors of the East
of England line in this century. Here again is only about a
century needed to, connect with the Lords of Cainhoe, but the
1inks are wanting.
South Wales had had an attraction for the family. The first
Lord of Cainhoe lost his life there in the naval battle of 1074,
.and the second Lord fell in a land battle in 1092. From Ithel
( or Iltet) a younger brother of thii:;d Nicol of Cainhoe, the South
Wales line descended. Ithel and Iltet were both Welsh names.
Yeatman uses Ithel; but the burgher lease of Willumus ap
Nicolus, who died in 1511, has the name Iltet, possibly an error
as Iltid has been a common name in the family in South Wales
in later times.
9
 Ithel had two sons. One is generally believed to be Geoffrey,.
the author of Liber Landavensis, a history of the Diocese of
Llandaff in South Wales, written about n50. The other son,
Gurgan, was chosen about no8 by the Normans as their first
Bishop at Llandaff, succeeding Herewald, the last Welsh Bishop,
who had died about four years before. The new Bishop has been
known in ecclesiastical history as Bishop Urban. The Welsh
Bishops of the period married, as they now do in the Church of
England, the Roman practice of celibacy not having been adopted
in Wales until later. He must have been quite a young man at
the time of his election. In I 121 he began the Cathedral at
Llandaff that is a monument to his energy. Though the Cathe-
dral has often been repaired, it is supposed that the Norman arch
of the present presbytery was the chancel arch of Urban's
Cathedral. He died in 1134.
Five years elapsed before a successor was chosen, and then
Uchtryd or Hutredus was elected in n39. It is probable that
he was a relative of Bishop Urban, perhaps on the female side.
Bishop Uchtryd died in II48 and his nephew, Geoffrey of Gulfrid,.,
was chosen Bishop the same year. It has been supposed that
Bish9p Geoffrey was the son or nephew of Geoffrey, the author
of the Liber Landavensis, and it is thus likely that he was the
nephew of Bishop Urban or Gurgan. Bishop Geoffrey died
shortly after his election, not later than 'n49.
The Welsh people were demanding that no more Normans be
imported as Bishops, but that a Welshman be given the place.
In II49 (or perhaps not until IIS3) the electio3,gave the appoint-
ment to one born in Wales, but he was Nicol, the son of Bishop
Urban or Gurgan, known to the Welsh as Nicol ap Gurgan. A
Latinized form of his name, Nicholus, has been changed by later
ecclesiastical writers to Nicholas, so that he is now best known
as Bishop Nicholas, instead of Bishop Nicol. Although a
descendant of the great Nicol de Albini, and belongin~ to one
of the great Norman conquering families, it can be said to the
credit of Bishop Nicol that he defended the Welsh of his Diocese
in every just cause. For thirty years he contested with the church
powers above him to grant rights and privileges to the Welsh
people. Bishop Nicol was a mighty power in the twelfth cen-
tury, so that when he died in n83 he was highly honored. \Ve
do not know the name of his mother nor his wife, but the burgher
IO
 lease granted to Bishop Gurgan from Sir John ap William, passed
to Bishop Nicol and after him to his son John.
Ownership of Welsh property was usually established by the
possessor's tracing his genealogy to the one to whom the land
was originally granted. Thus it was that the line of descent from
Bishop Nicol for the next eleven generations held the same
burgher lease, which probably referred to property at Llantwitt
Major in Glamorgan, South Wales. They were John, Nicol,
William, Nicol, William, Nicol, Henry, John, Nicol, Thomas,
and (eleventh) Henry Nicol, known from other sources to have
been living at Llantwitt Major as early as 1465. The use of
Nicol as a family name seems to have been begun with him,
though the burgher lease names him only as the brother of
William ap Thomas. Thomas ap Henry, son of Henry Nicol,
succeeded to the lease, then his son John Nicol (Nicol ap Thomas,
of the lease), and then his son, the last name on the burgher
lease, in 151:i: lltutus Nicol us (tityd Nicholl).
The Medieval period in Bdtish life ended, as far as the history
of the Nichols family of Glamorgan was concerned, with Dr.
John Nicholl of Llantwit Major, the Nicol ap Thomas mentioned
above, who married Mary, daughter of Thomas Stradling of
St. Donat's Castle, and sister of Sir Edward Stradling, one of
the leading Welshmen of his day. The family of Stradling had
retained prominence throughout the Middle Ages in South Wales,
and now, soon after the sixteenth century opened, Sir Edward of
St. Donat's finds himself and wife in charge or'Iltyd and Robert,
the two young sons of his widowed sister. Mary Stradling's hus-
band, Dr. John Nicholl, had died of the plague before 1511. His
uncle, William Nicholl, died in that year. The nearest heir to the
burgher. lease that William had held was the older son of Mary
Stradling Nicholl, living in the family of Sir Edward Stradling,
in the gloomy and distinguished old castle of St. Donat's on the
beetling rocks of the south shore of Wales, overlooking the sea.
This boy, known in the inheritance of the burgher lease as
Iltutus Nicolus, was about ten years of age when his great uncle's
inheritance fell to him. It may have been the wealth of the
inheritance, or may be the prominence of his maternal family of
Stradling of St. Donat's, with their blood of English royalty,
but it was more likely the change in the spirit of the new century
that brought out an unusual prominence to the Nichols family of
II
 South Wales. The Stradlings, as a great family, faded away with
the departure of chivalry and the older medievalism. The new
age, one of new discoveries, of new commercial life, and the newer
ideas of British education and energy, brought out a newer line
of men of adaptive energy. Among these men no one was more
ready to seize the cultural opportunities in South Wales than
Iltutus Nicolus. Within a century of the birth of Sir Edward
Stradling, the Stradlings ceased forever as a family of prominence
in Wales. Their qualities of greatness had passed into the female
lines of their descendants, and carried on in very different ways
than the customs of an age of chivalry.
The four sons of Iltutus Nicolus were John Iltyd, William,
Edmund, and Edward. The oldest son was the ancestor of those
prominent lines of Nicholl of the Great House (Ty Mawr) at
Llantwit Major village, two miles from St. Donat's, from which
line have come the landed gentry of Nicholl in Glamorgan, notable
among whom are Nicholl of the Ham, resident at the beautiful
modern farmland and estates near the meadowed shore, two miles
below the village of Llantwit Major.
It is clear, then, that one Nicol family can trace back to the
Lords of Cainhoe, the Nicol de Albinis, and the Viscounts of the
Cotentin. Midland England families lacked the Welsh process
of recording property by genealogical reckoning, and so missed
the very data necessary to connect them with their twelfth cen-
tury ancestors. The scattering of the family of Nicholl of
Glamorgan to Cornwall, to Bristol, to London, to New England,
to South Carolina, and elsewhere, opens possibilities for the
connection of many lines whose ancestry is now unknown.
The tide of migration to America began in the 'first half of the
seventeenth century, notably in the 163o's and 164o's. Before
this time there had occurred great cleavages and separations of
the family in Great Britain. · For many decades, and centuries
in some cases, certain Nichols families were established in certain
local districts and had become important men in the growth of
British civilization in those localities. . The changing traits
brought about by personal behavior, national powers, emergencies,
and the necessities arising from wars, commerce and religion,
also brought about decided differences in traits of these various
localized Nichols families. When the tide set in for America,
it brought to our shores during the seventeenth century some
12
thirty or more Nichols men whose names have been found.
Some of these returned to Europe, others died without male
descendants, some lines died out in a few generations, but a few
of these immigrants became ancestors of lines that have been
productive of men who have been and are now valuable factors
in American life. Some of these first American families were
of the Welsh line, but others were undoubtedly of Midland or
Eastern England or of Cornwall. It will take further researches
to establish their connection.
Only one line in America is now surely known to be connected
with the Glamorgan line, and this through the fourth son of
Iltutus Nicolus. The present Nicholl landed gentry of Wales
sprang from the eldest son, but the fourth son, Edward Nicholls,
living in I 568, was of Eglwys Brewis and engaged in maritime
shipping from Aberthaw and other South Wales ports, and also
from_Bristol, England. His son, Iltid Nicholls, and grandson,
Edmund Nicholls, continued the occupation. This Edmund
had a son Edmund by his first wife, and two sons, Thomas and
John Philip, by his second wife.
The drifting sands of the centuries had ruined all South Wales
harbors except Cardiff, but this did not result in any degenera-
tion on the part of the brothers. Edmund and Thomas fought
in Prince Rupert's Cavalier army, probably under Colonel Jol;m
Washington, when· Bristol fell to Cromwell in 1645; and early
in the second half of the seventeenth century they sailed in .their
own vessels, the Landwit and the Landoff, for a new home in the
new world at Newport, in the newly settled Rhode Island.
What became of John Philip Nichols, the third son, we do not
know. He and his son Thomas are supposed- to have gone to
Virginia or the West Indies. Edmund, the eldest son, died at
Newport, leaving no son.
Thomas, the second son, founded the Nichols families of
Rhode Island. The facts of his life ai,e meagre. He left six
sons: Thomas, b. 1660, John, b. 1666, Robert, b. 1671, Benjamin,
b. 1676, Jonathan, b. 1681, and Joseph b. 1684. All but the last
of these left sons.
In the settlement of the grants of land to those who had
suffered in the "King Philip" war, Thomas Nichols was one of
the grantees of a large tract on the west side of Narragansett
Bay. Three of his sons, Thomas, John, and Benjamin, went
13
over the bay to the new land, while the other three stayed with
their father and uncle Edmund at Newport.
Thomas 2nd, who lived at East Greenwich, left two sons,
James, b. 1693, and Thomas, b. 1702. James left four sons
whose descendants moved to Van Buren, N. Y., early in the
nineteenth centuty. Thomas 3rd died in 1825, leaving one
child, Thomas 4th, b. 1725 or 6, and he had three sons, Anthony,
Charles and James.
John Nichols, second son of Thomas the founder, had four
sons: John, b. 1689, Thomas, b. 1691, Robert, b. 1699, and
Joseph, b. 1705. Of these three sons, John lived in Coventry,
R. I. Joseph, the youngest, had four sons, and they lived at
East Greenwich; ·this family seems to be the source of other
Vermont and New York state lines that probably left Rhode
Island soon after the settlement of Danby, Vt. ·
Captain Benjamin Nichols, the fourth son of our founder,
lived in the town of North Kingstown, but almost in the village
of East Greenwich. He maintained the shipping business, at
least keeping the two ships that his father and uncle had used
in the South Wales and English trade. The connections of
many of the colonial Nichols men with the shipping trade is
one of the romances of the history of the family, so interesting
that it should not be allowed to fade from memory. Capt.
Benjamin had a large family. His second son Jonathan, b.
1700, removed to Newport. His 'other sons left considerable
families. Many of these descendants went to New York State,
and this includes the descendants of William Nichols of West.I
Greenwich, member of the Rhode Island Legislature before and
after the Revolution.
Jonathan, the fifth son of Thomas the founder, lived at New·
port as one of its most prominent men. He held many public
offices, and was chosen Deputy Governor in 1727. His son
Jonathan became prominent also and was Deputy Governor in
1756. He lived in the same family mansion, which is still stand-
ing in the older part of Newport. From his son Jonathan has
descended a Quaker line of Nichols, one of· which, Othniel
Foster Nichols, was construction engineer of the Williamsburg
Bridge in New York City. Robert, the second son, b. 1715,
probably lived in East Greenwich and had four sons, but their
names disappeared from Rhode Island records, and probably
matches the story of a "Nichols and four sons who left for
England early in the Revolution."
14
 During and after the Revolution, the family which for over
,one hundred years had confined itself to Rhode Island began to
migrate, mostly to Vermont and New York, and in later years
scattering throughout the Northwest. Mase Nichols, a descend-
.ant of Captain Benjamin, and great-grandfather of the editor,
:Settled in Fairfield, Herkimer County, New York. Anthony
Nichols, a descendant of Thomas Nichols, Jr., settled in Danby,
Vermont. Ebenezer Nichols of the same line settled in Danby
also, later going to Western New York and to La Porte, Indiana,
where he was a pioneer. He was the great-grandfather of E. M.
Nichols.
One of the large Nichols families is that descended from
Francis Nichols of Stratford, Connecticut. He died in 1650,
leaving three sons, Isaac of Stratford, Caleb of Woodbury, and
John of Watertown. These sons left respectively five, six and
three sons, who became important factors in Connecticut life
.about the close of the seventeenth century. This family has
made some influential migrations from Connecticut, notably to
New Jersey, and has cut a large figure in the life of s01:ne other
states. That Francis Nichols of Stratford was the son of Francis
Df Ampthill, England, and therefore nephew of Governor Richard
Nicolls, has been often asserted, but the proofs are unsatisfactory.
Another of the large American Nichols families is that
<lescended from Thomas Nichols of Amesbury, Massachusetts,
who died in 1703, leaving three sons, Thomas, Samuel, and John.
This line has produced a great many men of strong character.
There have been surmises that this family was connected either
with the family of Glamorgan or that of Ampthill, but nothing
has been proven. The data favorable to the connection with the
Glamorgan line seems to be in a relationship of Thomas with
David Nichols of Boston, son of David of Cowbridge, in South
Wales.
A second family in Rhode Island was descended from Richard
Nichols, who died about 1720 and whose four sons lived at and
near Coventry, Rhode Island. This line has been small, and is,
perhaps, extinct in the male line.
Another Richard Nichols of Ipswich, Massachusetts, who died
in 1674, was the founder of a line that has been of uniformly
high character, and has increased in prominence during the nine-
t('enth century. Two branches went· to Newport, Rhode Island,
ir\ the early part of the eighteenth century, and held nearly as

15
 important a place in the colony as the older line of Thomas of
Newport.
The line of Alexander Nichols or Nickels of Boston and later
of Sheepscott, Maine, has produced many men of quality in
Northern New England.
James Nichols of Malden, Massachusetts, in the eighteentl
century, left four sons, James, Nathaniel, Samuel and Caleb
who were ancestors of some important local families of Easterfl
Massachusetts.
Other lines in New England with whose descendants th
editor has not yet become familiar are those of Adam of New
Haven, William of Danvers, Thomas of Hingham, Randall of
Charlestown, David of Boston, Allen of Barnstable, and Cyprian
of Hartford. These are small families. Some of them, perhaps.
all, became extinct before the twentieth century.
In Pennsylvania in the eighteenth century, Julius and William
Nichols founded families that are living in the Central West.
Dr. John Nicoll of New York came from Scotland early in
the eighteenth century and established a small Hudson Valley
family of local distinction.
In the South were many Nichols men who settled there in the·
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, but few of them have a
large number of descendants. From the family in South Wales
there were four or five missionaries who came out from the
Church of England. Some of them went to the Carolinas, and
probably one went to Maryland. Just what is the line of ,con-
nection between them and the famous anti-lottery Governor,
1
Judge and General in Louisiana is not known, but it would
probably be possible to work out that line. Various substantial
Nichols families of the Carolinas are doubtless from the same
stock.
In the West Indies there were early Nichols settlers, some of
them men of importance in those colonies. Jamaica and Bermuda
had the most notable Nichols names, but we do not know if those·
lines have continued into this century.
There are, no doubt, important American lines not mentioned
here. Systematic work will bring out families not now apparent,
and will undoubtedly solve many of the problems of ancestry-
which many of the family wish to know.

16