Ionia County MI Archives Obituaries.....Nichols, Smith 1939
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Marilyn Ransom mransom311@gmail.com July 20, 2015, 7:27 pm

The Belding Banner-News, Thursday, July 13, 1939


Smith Nichols, age 90, long time local resident and pioneer of Ionia county, 
died Saturday morning at 8 o’clock at his farm home north and east of this 
city.  He had been ill for nine weeks.  Mr. Nichols had never before suffered 
an illness and had never, before the illness which took his life, required the 
services of a physician.

Born in New York state January 9, 1849, Smith Nichols was one of the nine 
children of Trowbridge and Rhoda Nichols.  At the age of 10 he came to Michigan 
with his parents and settled on a farm near the Ionia-Montcalm county line.

On December 8, 1875 he was united in marriage to Julia Walker of Orleans, who 
has been his faithful companion in their 63 years of married life and who 
survives him.  Two children were born to them, a daughter, Ola, who later 
became Mrs. Peter Martin, and a son, Ross, who died in 1898 at the age of 19.  
The couple also had an adopted son, Willis, at present a resident of 
Indianapolis, Indiana, and who because of illness was unable to attend the 
funeral.  For 63 years the couple have resided on the same farm to which they 
went immediately following their marriage.

Mr. Nichols was a man who cared little for things outside his home, and the 
woods and fields which he loved.  Wise was he in the love of the out-of-doors 
and the youthful trapper and hunter asking advice from his elders was usually 
admonished to “ask Smith Nichols.”  Early in life he learned the stone masons 
trade and built the foundation for many of the older houses in town.  The 
monument which marks his grave was chiseled by his own hand from a huge field 
stone shortly after the death of their son Ross.  Last summer, at the advanced 
age of 89, he made the markers for his own grave and that of his wife.

Besides the widow, the daughter, and the adopted son, Mr. Nichols is survived 
by a brother, Cary, of Ionia, 4 grandchildren, 5 great grandchildren, and a 
number of nieces and nephews.

Funeral services were held on Monday afternoon at 2:30 from the Fales Funeral 
Home with Rev. H. S. Ellis officiating.  Burial was in the family lot in the 
old cemetery in the southeast part of the city.  Six nephews, Roy Nicholas of 
Grand Rapids. Myrn Nichols of Ionia, Ernest Leach of Orleans, Clement Dexter of 
Chicago, Pete Timmers of Fremont, and Austin Dexter of this city, acted as 
pallbearers.


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