Ancestor of the Week: Thomas William Nickerson (1871–1946) — The Livery-Stable Man of Francesville

Some ancestors you find in a courthouse. Thomas William Nickerson I found in a barn — a livery barn, in a little Indiana town, with the horses stamping in their stalls and the smell of hay and harness leather in the air. That was his world, and for a while it was a good one.

Thomas was born in McLean, McLean County, Illinois, on November 30, 1871 — a son of George Albert Nickerson and Malinda Ann Johnson. (My own family file long carried November 20; his Indiana death certificate says November 30, and where the records argue, the man’s own record is the one I follow — the argument is shown at the end of this post rather than hidden.) The 1880 census finds him at eight years old in Wapella, De Witt County, Illinois, in a full house: his parents, brothers James, Everett, and little Richard, a baby sister Cora, and Jennie, sixteen. A farm boy in a farm family, one of many — nothing yet to say where his road would run.

His road ran to a Kentucky-born girl. Nancy Elizabeth Pratt was born September 12, 1873, in Estill County, Kentucky, a daughter of William Henry Harrison Pratt and Caroline M. Trent. Thomas and Nancy were married September 28, 1892, at Heyworth, Illinois — the McLean County marriage register itself says so (License No. 19759), with her obituary and the 1900 census in agreement. The register keeps the witnesses’ names too: Arthur Johnson and James A. Nickerson — Thomas’s own brother James stood up with him — and the minister was M. F. Ingraham, of the Christian church. Their first boy, Oliver, arrived in March 1894. Hold onto that Trent name, because it matters to this family twice over: Nancy’s mother Caroline was a daughter of Zachariah Green Trent — the sheriff and justice of the peace some of you met here as our Ancestor of the Week on October 11 — and of Matilda Coffman, the great-grandmother at the heart of my mother’s-side mystery. So when Thomas married Nancy, the Nickersons didn’t just gain a wife and mother. They married straight into the Trent line I have chased for years.

They settled in Pulaski County, Indiana — Nancy’s obituary says they came in 1893 and “lived here continually” — and Thomas built his living the way a horse-country man could: a livery and feed stable in Francesville. The old listing reads like a promise: “Livery & Feed Stable — Barns 5, Residence 35 — 1st class rigs.” In 1900 the census finds the young family in Salem Township: Thomas, 28, head of house; Nannie, 26; Oliver, 6; Orval, 4; and baby Viola, 1. By 1910 he’s working at the livery barn, and the house has filled out — Nancy, Ollie at 16, Orval at 14, Viola at 11, and Bessie at 9. Four children, a working stable, a church they belonged to. If you had passed through Francesville in those years and needed a rig, Thomas Nickerson is who the town would have sent you to.

Then the sorrows came, the way they did to so many families of that generation — not all at once, but one after another, until the shape of the family was changed for good.

Nancy had been sick, her obituary says, “much of the time during the past fourteen years.” In October 1915 she underwent an operation for acute abdominal trouble at the home of Mrs. Anna Banwart in Francesville. She rallied, and her recovery looked hopeful — and then, the paper says, “heart complications unlooked for counteracted her only chance and she sank into unconsciousness and death.” Her death certificate fixes the moment: Sunday, October 24, 1915, at two o’clock in the morning — the very words her obituary used. She was 42 years old. The Pythian Sisters of Francesville Temple No. 385 draped their charter in mourning for thirty days and sent their resolutions to “the bereaved husband and children.” She was laid to rest in Nauvoo Cemetery, outside Francesville, where her own Pratt kin already rested. Thomas was 43, with four children, the youngest fourteen.

Three and a half years later came the knock every soldier’s family dreaded — except Ollie had nearly made it home. Oliver Holl Nickerson, the oldest boy, had enlisted on May 12, 1917, at Fort Thomas, Kentucky — Private First Class, 30th Infantry. He married Katherine Auer in August 1918. He was, the Francesville paper wrote, “soon to be released” when, on April 28, 1919, the bus he was riding near Camp Merritt, New Jersey — he was on his way to see his wife — met another bus head-on at the top of a hill. Seven people were killed. Ollie was not killed outright; he was taken to the hospital, where he died as surgeons amputated his crushed right leg. He was 25 years old. A comrade, Private Brown, escorted his body home as far as Monon. The funeral was held from the Christian church in Francesville, and Ollie was buried at Nauvoo, near his mother. The full newspaper account is in my files, and it is in the records below — I have not softened a word of it, because it was written by people who were there, and it deserves to be read the way they wrote it.

His younger brother Orville — Sergeant First Class Orville Albert Nickerson — had signed up ten days before Ollie, on May 2, 1917, at the same Fort Thomas. Orville came home: the Army transport lists carry him back, and he lived on in Plymouth, the son who signed his father’s death certificate as informant in 1946. We tell his piece of the story from those records, which are in the list below.

Thomas carried on. He married again, to Daisy Fenton — a widow when he met her, Daisy (Fenton) McClure; she is in the family photograph with him and his father George — and they had no known children. That marriage did not last: her death certificate records her as divorced, under the name Daisy McClure, working as a hospital maid in South Bend when she died there on April 29, 1929. She was brought home to Plymouth and laid in Oak Hill Cemetery on May 1, 1929 — the same ground where Thomas himself would rest seventeen years later.

The censuses follow him the way they follow so many men of his time: 1920 in Plymouth, Marshall County, then 1930 and 1940 in Vernon, Jennings County, where the 1930 census taker wrote him down as a widower. Late in life he came back to Plymouth, and there, on Saturday, April 27, 1946, at 12:30 in the afternoon, at the Austin Nursing Home, after an illness of three weeks, Thomas William Nickerson died at 74. His obituary remembers him plainly: a member of the Christian Church, survived by his son Orville and his daughter Mrs. Bessie Gilbert, both of Plymouth, by ten grandchildren and eleven great-grandchildren, by a brother Otis in Canada and two sisters back in Illinois. He was buried April 30 in Oak Hill Cemetery, Plymouth.

His estate took three more years to settle — real estate sold, a monument paid for, the funeral bill paid — and when the Marshall Circuit Court approved the final report in December 1949, the last $484.80 was divided among his heirs in careful equal shares. I want you to see one name on that list, because it’s where his story becomes mine: among the $40.40 shares — a granddaughter’s third of a daughter’s portion — stands Mildred Gilbert. Mildred Marie (Sheetz) Gilbert, my grandmother. Her mother was Thomas’s daughter Viola Beatrice Nickerson, who married Bernard Gregory Scheetz on November 11, 1919, in Pulaski County. Viola died in 1944, two years before her father — which is why, in 1949, her portion came down divided among her children.

So the line runs straight and documented: Thomas → Viola → Mildred → my mother Nancy → me. The livery-stable man of Francesville is my great-great-grandfather. And through Nancy Pratt, his children’s Trent blood runs back to Zachariah and Matilda too — two of my lines, joined in one Francesville household, in a house full of children, a mile from a livery barn.

Welcome home, Grandpa Thomas. The rigs are all motor cars now, but we still know the way to Nauvoo. 🕯️

— Coni Dubois

The records behind this story

Every claim above rests on one of these, from my own research files — the Ancestors of Coni Allen book, entries 30–31 and family.

• 1880 United States Federal Census — Wapella, De Witt County, Illinois; Thomas W. Nickerson, 8, son of George A. & Malinda A. Nickerson. Roll T9_203, Page 464, ED 79.
• 1900 United States Federal Census — Salem Township, Pulaski County, Indiana; Thomas W. Nickerson, head; Nannie E.; Oliver H., 6; Orval A., 4; Viola B., 1. (This census gives his birth as March 1871 — see the note below.)
• 1910 United States Federal Census — Salem Township, Pulaski County, Indiana; Thomas Nickerson, works at livery barn; Nancy; Ollie, 16; Orval, 14; Viola, 11; Bessie, 9. Roll T624_375.
• 1920 United States Federal Census — Plymouth Ward 2, Marshall County, Indiana. Roll T625_456, Page 15A, ED 169.
• 1930 United States Federal Census — Vernon, Jennings County, Indiana; “Tom W Nickerson.” Roll 594, Page 4A, ED 16.
• 1940 United States Federal Census — Vernon, Jennings County, Indiana; “Thomas W Nicherson.” Roll T627_1058, Page 6B, ED 40-16.
• Indiana, Death Certificates, 1899–2011 — Thomas William Nickerson, 1946: Marshall County Board of Health Certificate of Death, Certificate #47, Book CH-32, Page 92; Registered No. 12647. Born November 30, 1871, McLean County, Illinois, son of George Nickerson and — Johnson; informant Orville Nickerson of Plymouth; died April 27, 1946, Austin Nursing Home, Plymouth; buried April 30, 1946, Oak Hill Cemetery, Plymouth.
• Obituary of Thomas William Nickerson (Plymouth paper, April 1946): died Saturday afternoon, April 27, 1946, age 74; funeral at Danielson & VanGilder Funeral Home; burial Oak Hill Cemetery, April 30, 1946.
• Final Report of the Estate of Thomas Nickerson — Marshall Circuit Court, September Term 1949; final distribution of $484.80, including Mildred Gilbert $40.40.
• Obituary of Nancy Elizabeth (Pratt) Nickerson (Francesville paper, October 1915), with the Pythian Sisters’ Resolutions of Respect, Francesville Temple No. 385.
• Indiana, Death Certificates, 1899–2011 — Nancy E. Nickerson: wife of Thomas Nickerson; daughter of Wm H. Pratt and Carolina Trent; died October 24, 1915, at 2 a.m., Francesville, Pulaski County; buried October 25, 1915, Nauvoo Cemetery.
• Francesville newspaper account of Pvt. Oliver H. Nickerson’s death (May 9, 1919): Camp Merritt bus collision, April 28, 1919. Supported by the Indiana Gold Star Honor Roll, 1914–1918, and U.S. Headstone Applications for Military Veterans.
• McLean County, Illinois, Marriage Register — License No. 19759, Register of Marriages, p. 305: license issued September 27, 1892; Thomas W. Nickerson, 21, of Heyworth, son of George Nickerson and — Johnson, married Nancy Pratt, 20, daughter of William Pratt and — Trent, on September 28, 1892, at Heyworth, by M. F. Ingraham, a Christian minister; witnesses Arthur Johnson and Jas A. Nickerson. (The clerk wrote “Pratt” in the groom’s name box; the entry’s own parent columns name him plain.)
• Indiana, World War I, Enrollment Cards, 1917 — Orville Nickerson of Francesville: Army service from May 2, 1917, Fort Thomas, Kentucky; rank Sergeant First Class (FamilySearch). This is why no WWI draft registration card exists for Orville: he was already in the Army a month before registration day, June 5, 1917.
• U.S. Army Transport Service Passenger Lists — Orville Albert Nickerson, returning home.
• Indiana, Death Certificates, 1899–2011 — Daisy McClure (Daisy Fenton), Registered No. 420: born August 4, 1874, in Iowa, daughter of Lewis H. Fenton and Maryette Stephens; divorced, former husband Thos Nickerson; died April 29, 1929, South Bend, St. Joseph County; buried May 1, 1929, Oak Hill Cemetery, Plymouth.
• Find A Grave — Thomas William Nickerson #81825788.
• The book’s figures for this entry: the family photograph (Nancy with Thomas, Orville in his lap and Oliver at his side), shared by Cynthia Huntsman Haller, April 24, 2019; the portrait of Tom Nickerson, shared by HoldawayCarolWanlass1, May 9, 2019; Thomas’s grave; his death record (Marshall County Board of Health, purchased May 14, 2014); Nauvoo Cemetery.

Where the records disagreed, here is how I settled it — shown, not hidden. Thomas’s birth: his own death certificate says November 30, 1871, and his obituary agrees, so November 30 stands; my book’s November 20 and the 1900 census’s March 1871 do not. The marriage: the register itself gives September 28, 1892. Nancy’s death: her own certificate says October 24, 1915, at 2 a.m. — agreeing with her obituary’s “Sunday morning at two o’clock” — so October 24 stands. Nancy’s maiden name is Pratt in every record behind her; one published family history in my book spells it Platt, and I flag the variant rather than hide it. Thomas’s certificate records his late-life occupation as “Laborer”; his livery-stable years rest on the 1910 census and the Francesville listing. Clerks wrote what they heard — “Nicherson” among the spellings — and the family is the same.

This collection exists by the help of many — Cynthia Huntsman Haller, HoldawayCarolWanlass1, the Plymouth Public Library, and every cousin and clerk who kept a piece of it. Thank you, all.

© 2026 Ever Widening Circle Research by Coni Dubois LLC. All rights reserved.