Andrew Nicholson/Mary Ann Boyd - Henry County, Indiana 

ANDREW NICHOLSON, a retired citizen of New Castle, Henry County, Indiana was born in Guilford County, North Carolina, November 5, 1805, near the battlefield on which General Nathaniel Green, of Revolutionary fame, won one of his remarkable victories, and on which field, when a boy, Mr Nicholson found many a rusty old bayonet and other grim relics of the sanguinary conflict. The parents of Mr. Nicholson were John and Mary (Williams) Nicholson, the former of whom was born in North Carolina and the latter in Maryland. When Andrew Nicholson was about twenty years of age the family came to the west and located in Ross County, Ohio, near Richmond. After several years' residence in Ross County, they moved to Iowa, where the mother died and the father then came to Henry County. Indiana, where he died from the result of an accident when he was eighty-four years old. The father served in the war of 1812 and Andrew still remembers his own small errands in going back and forth with messages from and to the regiment. The martial fervor seems to have pervaded the family, as Andrew himself long afterwards had two sons in the Civil War of 1861-65 and receiving news at one time that one of
these (John) was sick in hospital, went there to bring the boy home and on the way back encountered a company of General John Morgan's men, but was not molested and reached home in safety with his boy. It was the custom,in the Civil war days, for Samuel Hoover, a good reader, to gather the neighbors together, mount a box and read the news as it came. When it was reported that a relation or friend had lost his life in battle, all would stand it without a murmur, but when it was announced that such relation had been sent to Libby prison, the blood of the hearers would boil. 

In the early days, while living in Wayne County, Indiana, Mr Nicholson worked in a brickyard at Richmond for seven dollars per month. A friend, Mark Reeves, who later became a merchant at Cincinnati, Ohio, had worked in the same yard, and some years afterward came from that city to New Castle to buy a span of carriage horses for family use. In a crowd Andrew twitted him with having once worked at seven dollars per month and created a great laugh. Young Nicholson had educated himself at home with borrowed books and at twenty-one began teaching, a vocation he followed for fifteen or twenty years. One of his pupils was George W. Julian, afterwards a congressman of considerable note. Spelling was committed to memory at school and lexicographers differed in this respect, Walker, for instance, ending certain words lith "ick" and "our," while Webster ended the same words with "ic" and "or, as publick, public; rancor, rancour, and so on. At one of the spelling matches in Nicholson's school. Julian added the "k" to public, while a little girl left it off, and Julian went to the foot the Webster standard having been adopted. Julian was angered at this and quit school, but afterward was reconciled and returned. The schools were on the subscription plan, at a tuition fee of one dollar and a half per quarter for each pupil, yet Mr Nicholson saved money and purchased a farm of eighty acres, to
which he devoted his time and attention in the summers. In 1859 Mr. Nicholson came to Henry County, Indiana, and bought a farm of one hundred and eighty- four acres near Rich Square meeting house and cultivated it in part until his Sons went off to war, when he sold the farm and came to New Castle and bought an eighty-acre tract, on which he erected his present residence. He has retired from active work and has his money loaned out on interest. He has platted part of his eight acres into residence lots, and has occupied his present dwelling for thirty-one years. At the age of twenty-five, Mr Nicholson married MISS SARAH ANN LAMB for his FIRST wife, to which marriage were born seven children, namely: Abner,a mechanic and farmer in Wayne county, Indiana;
Julia Corwin, in Urich, Henry County, Missouri; Luther was a soldier in the Civil war and died at home when thirty years old; Cornelia was married to Francis Gentry and died in middle life: Eveline became Mrs. James Bradbury and died when about fifty years old; Charles died at forty, and John, the soldier-boy before spoken of, died at thirty-five. The SECOND marriage of Mr Nicholson took place in 1870 to MISS MARY BOYD, of Brownsville. Union County, Indiana, but a native of Harrison County, Kentucky, and a daughter of JAMES and NANCY (RUBY) BOYD who settled in Union County, Indiana, when Mrs Nicholson was but a child. No children have been born to this second marriage. In religion Mr Nicholson was formerly of the United Brethren faith, but for the past thirty years has been a Presbyterian, his present wife being of the same
faith. In politics he was formerly a Whig, but is now a Republican and for three years served as county commissioner in Wayne County. At a recent public meeting Hon Martin L. Bundy delivered a brief oral address, taking Andrew Nicholson and his long and useful life as his text, and in connection therewith reviewing the history of the United States as it was developed during the ninety-six years of Mr. Nicholson's remarkable career. The speech was a good and well received. 

Source: COMPENDIUM OF BIOGRAPHY Of Henry County, Indiana B.F. Bowen

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