William Ellsworth Nichols (1854-1908)

NICHOLS, SKINNER, MCGREW, BROWN

Posted By: Dorian Myhre (email)
Date: 3/3/2017 at 23:22:43

From Nevada Representative April 6, 1908

OBITUARY

WILLIAM E. NICHOLS

The body of the late William Ellsworth Nichols was brought to Nevada Saturday forenoon for burial and was interred with brief but fitting services in the Nevada cemetery. The services were in charge of Rev. Hess, pastor of the Presbyterian church at Newton and the prayer was offered by Rev. W. P. Payne of this city. The morning was a beautiful one for an out of door service and there was a goodly attendance of business and personal friends of Mr. Nichols and friends and sympathizers with Mrs. Nichols and her family. The funeral party consisted of Mrs. Nichols, Harold Nichols, and Collin Nichols, her children: Mrs. J. B. McGrew of Bloomington, Nebraska,a nd Mrs. H. W. Brown of Waterloo, her sisters; Rev. E. Skinner of Waterloo, her father, and Mr. Garret Nollen of Newton. Mr. Nichols' late partner in the drug business there; also Rev. Hess of Newton, who had charge of there services. All of the party came from Iowa City excepting Mr. Skinner, who came directly from Waterloo and met his daughter here unexpectedly to them. Most of the party left by the afternoon train on the Northwestern for Iowa City, whence they will return to their respective homes.

Mr. Nichols was a native of Ohio and was born on May 3, 1854. He died at Iowa City, Iowa after a protracted illness on April 2, 1908, aged 53 years and 11 months. He grew up in the native state and about the time he attained his majority he entered a drug store there as clerk. Having learned the drug business, he came to Iowa in 1878 and started in the business for himself at Sheffield in Franklin county. He remained there for quite a number of years and was afterwards for a time in the commission business at St. Paul. In the early of middle '90s, however, he returned to Iowa and engaged in the drug business again at Goldfield in Wright county. He remained there a year and then moved a few miles to Eagle Grove, where he continued in business for four years. In the summer of 1900 he sold out there and came to Nevada, where he was in business quite successfully for six years, retiring on account of ill health in the summer of 1906. After a few months at rest, however, he thought he could safely undertake active business again and he went into business at Newton, where his interests have since been, and whither the family removed in the fall or early winter of 1906. His personal participation in business here was, however, of short duration; for after a few months his health broke down again, and ever since last summer either at home or in the hospital at Iowa City he had been making a brave but vain struggle against the inevitable.

Mr. Nichols was married in September, 1881, at Manson, Iowa to Miss Collin Skinner; and Mrs. Nichols with their two children survives him. Of these children Harold, the elder, is about finishing his course in Armour Institute at Chicago, and Miss Collin, the younger, is with her mother at Newton or Iowa City. Mr. Nichols was a man of force and ability and of good success in business. He was esteemed most highly among those who knew him and of Nevada, where he lived longest in recent years and was best known, he was especially regarded. It was to Nevada and his associations here that his mind turned in the choice of final resting place and his interment here as in consonance with his own expressed wish as well as with the sentiment of his family.