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Nathan Nichols
Nathan Nichols taught the first school in '53, in a house left vacant by one of the Frakes. The house stood on the bottom near White Breast, in section 26. It was long afterwards moved to Mr. Richies, and is doing service as a stable.
The death of Nathan Nichols will long be remembered on account of the painful circumstances under which it took place. He and Mrs. Hewland, who was a widow, and a relative of his, had come from Ohio together, and were living together south of White Breast, till a grown son of Mrs. H.'s created a disturbance that caused him to take up his abode alone in a small cabin not far distant. One evening, some time after taking up his lonely abode, he went to Mrs. Hewland's for a pitcher of butter-milk. On receiving it he took a hearty drink of it, and was observed to take another ere he reached his domicile. Nothing more was known or thought of him till next day, when his non-appearance about the premises induced some one to go to his house. There they found him dead, and all the evidences to prove that he had died in extreme agony. He was lying upon his bed with his head hung over the railing, and his face black, whilst over him and upon the floor were strewed large quantities of feathers from the bed-tick that he had evidently torn open in his struggles. At one time some suspicious of foul treatment were entertained, but no conclusion was better to arrive at than that the poor man died from a violent attack of bilious colic, induced by the excessive draughts of butter-milk he had taken into his stomach. Mrs. Hewland afterwards returned to Ohio.