NICOLLS, WILLIAM (1863-1922)

NICOLLS, WILLIAM, Anglican rector, Newcastle and Nelson, 1908-10; b. Southampton, England, 1 Oct 1863, s/o William Thompson Nicolls and Mary Isabella MacDonald; m. 1899, Isabella (McCurdy) Mitchell, wid/o James P. Mitchell (s/o James Mitchell and Ann Jane Caldwell); d. New York City, 15 Sep 1922.

William Nicolls was educated at St John's College, Hurstpierpoint, Sussex, England, and at St John's College in Winnipeg (BA 1885, BD 1888, MA 1891). He had brief appointments at Moose Jaw and elsewhere in the West and in 1891 was named rector of Medicine Hat. In seventeen years in that post, working "among the Indians and in rural communities...he experienced the rigors of frontier life."

In the fall of 1908 Nicolls was called from Alberta to the rectorship of Newcastle and Nelson, as successor to the Rev. Frank W. M. Bacon. Bacon had held the position for only a year and a half, and Nicolls occupied it for only twenty months. In the summer of 1910 he transferred to Nova Scotia, where he was rector at Mulgrave and Yarmouth successively. For a short time after the outbreak of World War I he was an immigration chaplain and chaplain to the departing troops at Halifax and Quebec City. He then accepted the rectorship at LaHave, N.S.

In 1920 Nicolls transferred to the diocese of Long Island, N.Y. He was with the Episcopal church's city missions until 1921 and was then appointed rector of Trinity Church, Northport, L.I. His death in 1922 occurred in a New York City hospital. He and his wife, Isabella (McCurdy) Mitchell, had two daughters and a son.