Nicoll Family Papers

The collection numbers 119 pieces of letters and manuscripts and 150 pieces of photographs and ephemera. It has been fully cataloged and available for research.

Letters, manuscripts, documents, photographs, and ephemera. Family and business correspondence of John Nicoll, Charles Nicoll, Charles Edward Nicoll and Edward Bishop Nicoll. The Nicoll family papers depict the evolution of the home and family life throughout the nineteenth century, details of the business activities, maintaining a home, child rearing, and leisure, especially thought and activities of married women.

The collections contains a note signed by Samuel Bishop, the collector of the port of New Haven. He appointed his son, Abraham Bishop, an ardent supporter of Jefferson, a deputy collector. In 1801 President Jefferson removed the Federalist collector of the port and assigned the place to Samuel Bishop. As his father was in feeble health, it was generally considered that the appointment was in effect that of Abraham himself, a reward for political services.

The letters of John Nicoll contain his business correspondence, and the letters to his son, Charles Nicoll, who was attending Middlebury college in Vermont, and later worked in New York. His business correspondence contains a letter from John Jacob Astor (1763-1848), in which the famous financier inquires after certain transactions with John Nicoll and John Ebbits, husband of John Nicoll's niece Sarah Nicoll Woodland (b. 1774).

The letters of Charles Nicoll to his wife describe construction works on canals in Montague and Greenfield, Mass., where he worked in the 1830-40's. In his letter of Feb. 27, 1858, William Law wrote to Charles Nicoll: "Kansas affairs seem to get deeper and deeper... Gov. Walker has been bought and thus forfeited any claim to honour and honesty ... I look however for better times -- in Missouri they are coming up to the help of free soil and Freedom - in Russia they have taken a good stand and they speak out like honest men for freedom."

Letters written by Mary Ann Palmer Nicoll to her relatives and friends in New Haven - Martha Loiusa Doolittle Palmer, sisters Eleanore and Elizabeth Palmer, and others, contain family news, description of domestic and social life, and also poems written by Mary Ann Palmer Nicoll.

The papers of Edward B. Nicoll include his business and private correspondence, and the journal of the automobile trip that he undertook with his wife in August of 1909 from Los Angeles to San Francisco. The letters of Charles Edward Nicoll of 1909-1911 contain reflections on aging, comparisons between the life in the Midwest and California..

The collection also includes the family scrapbook and photographs of Los Angeles and Long Beach in 1910-30's. Among the photographs are pictures of the aftermath of the earthquakes in San Francisco April 13, 1906 and Long Beach in March 3, 1933, and the costumed balls staged by the Los Angeles Turnverein in 1920's.

Ephemera include a Catalogue of the Instructors and Pupils in the Young Ladies' Collegiate Institute New Haven, Con. During the Year Ending August, 1849. (New Haven, William H. Stanley, Printer, 1849), and issue of The Mother's Assistant and Fireside Miscellany (Boston, C. Stone & Co.,) 1855, Vol. X, No. 4., an issue of American Friend, a newspaper published in Marietta, OH (Nov. 19, 1819), and a membership card to an "Aloha Beach Club".