From “Joseph Nichols and the Nicholites”
By
Kenneth Lane Carroll
Published 1962
Easton Publishing Company
Context from Pages 13-17

THE SPIRITUAL PILGRIMAGE OF JOSEPH NICHOLS
CHAPTER I

  Toward the end of the colonial period of history there suddenly appeared in Maryland and Delaware a religious society known by the name of Nicholites or "New Quakers." Like the Rogerenes of New Jersey and Connecticut to the north and the Edisto community in South Carolina to the south, this indepen­dent religious group was very similar to the Society of Friends, or Quakers, in practice and principles. Of these three similar, yet different, societies, the Nicholites became the most wide­spread and the best known. At the end of the eighteenth century they could be found in Delaware, Maryland, North and South Carolina.

  This very interesting sect which saw its rise in the rural area along the Delaware-Maryland border in the 1760's owed its existence to Joseph Nichols. A native of Delaware, he was born near Dover about 1730 and engaged in husbandry in Kent County, Delaware. Nichols received very little formal education but is said to have been "endowed with strong powers of mind and a remarkable flow of spirits."

  Growing to manhood at a time when many colonists were unchurched and when the influence of the Church of England was already declining, but before the beginning of the rapid sweep of Methodism through Delaware and the Eastern Shore of Maryland, Joseph Nichols and his friends spent a great deal of their leisure in the pleasures of the day-dancing, fiddling, horse­racing, and attendance at fairs where they were noted for their "frolicking and merriment." Lambert Hopkins, a contemporary of Nichols, has said that this was an age that was characterized by a "laxity of manners, and insensibility of mind" among the inhabitants of the Delmarva Peninsula. Futhermore, he con­tinued, "a general blindness with regard to their duty to God appeared mostly to prevail."  

  In the 1750's Joseph Nichols married Mary Tumlin, daughter of Nathaniel Tumlin of Kent County, Delaware, who in 1755 left his daughter a farm containing 115 acres. Joseph and Mary Nichols retained this land until 1764 when they sold it to Ruben Oliver. Later Nichols bought 224 acres from Joseph and Elizabeth Chadwick and Winlock Wheeler in Mispillion Hundred on the south side of Ivy Branch in Kent County. Three children are known to have been born to Joseph and Mary: Rhoda on March 8, 1756; Isaac, January 22, 1758; and Rachel, September 5, 1763. One of the daughters died sometime before 1770, and Isaac, "a poor infirm child who was disordered with the dropsy," died in 1773.

  Joseph Nichols' humor, vivacity, and ability to amuse others made his company very much sought after by the young people of his neighborhood, so that on First-days (as he and his followers later, under Quaker influence, came to call Sundays) he was frequently the center of a crowd. At these and other times of leisure Nichols often entertained his friends with an­ecdotes and songs. These pleasant gatherings of friends and neighbors continued in much the same way until there occurred an unfortunate accident which caused a profound change in Nichols-driving him to deeper thinking about the meaning of life. This episode he later described to Lambert Hopkins and others, saying that "he was at a frolic where they met together for merriment, such as dancing, etc. At this frolic he was accom­panied by a very particular and intimate friend, who was taken ill and died suddenly at that place. As he reflected on the cir­cumstance, it was made the means of producing a radical reformation in his life and conduct."  

  History records many similar examples of radical changes which take place in the lives of certain people as a result of some such individual experience. Nichols, sensitive as he was to drama, must not have been unaware of the role that he was enacting: he was the friend who stands by and is transformed by a sudden death.

  The mid-eighteenth century was a time of growing religiosity in America just as it was in England. At the same time that John Wesley led the great Methodist revival in England, George Whitefield and others were helping the Great Awakening, which had begun earlier with the preaching of Jonathan Edwards in New England, to spread up and down the coast. There was a growing search for a more satisfying religion by many who found the conventional churches wanting. As a consequence there came a released religious enthusiasm which found formal­ism in the churches a symptom of spiritual decline and also gave a new sense of importance to many humbler citizens. This general religious development helps explain the religious pilgrimage that Joseph Nichols made and the way that his companions in mirth became his followers in religion.

  Nichols, who does not appear to have been outwardly religious in the early years of his manhood, underwent a spiritual pilgrimage that moved him from his early "libertine" attitude to one of serious outlook and brought him to see "with clearness the line of duty which was marked out for him to pursue, and that his own peace of mind required that he should yield an unreserved obedience thereto, regardless of the opinions and customs of others."  

  Unlike many individuals who undergo similar religious experiences, Joseph Nichols did not withdraw from his old circle of friends. He continued to be surrounded by his former com­panions who were still seeking his leadership in pleasure and mirth. Nichols, however, had become convinced that he and his followers should spend their time in a more satisfying way. After expressing this concern, he suggested that they read a portion of Scripture whenever they met. Out of the respect which they had possessed for him in the past, his neighbors agreed to this proposal. With the passage of time these gatherings were trans­formed from scenes of mirth to "seasons of serious thoughtful­ness." Nichols' genius in friendship enabled him to move many of his friends and acquaintances along with him on this religious pilgrimage- so that as he became more "circumspect" in appear­ance, behavior, and conversation, so did they.

  At length Joseph Nichols became convinced that he saw clearly before him his duty-to preach and, if necessary, to ignore the customs and opinions of other men. And, so, he appeared as a "minister" among his former companions, con­vinced that peace and happiness could come only from seeking and doing the right. It appears that Nichols began his ministry shortly after 1760, for he had already been preaching sometime before Lambert Hopkins became one of his followers in 1764 or 1765. By 1766, when John Woolman made his famous tour on foot through Delaware and the Eastern Shore, Nichols seems to have become well-known in his community.

  It was, then, in the early 1760's that Nichols began his brief ministry which lasted until 1770. In this short period of less than ten years he traveled through Delaware, both the Eastern and Western Shores of Maryland, and even in the area of Penn­sylvania around Philadelphia. In his meetings Nichols sat in silence, as the Friends or Quakers around him did, until he felt himself called to preach. When he felt no such impulse, his meetings (which were held under the shade of trees, sometimes in private homes, and occasionally in the meeting houses of Friends) ended in silence. If asked beforehand whether or not he would preach that day, his answer was, "I mean to be obedient."  

  It was Nichols' belief that man must be obedient to the "Inward Director." As his followers later wrote, he "believed in the light that Shines in the understanding of man and woman that Discovers to them betwixt good and evil, right and wrong and reproves for evil and Justifies for well-Doing, to be the only means of Grace to enable us to work out our Salvation, and as he believed so he preached."   This aspect of his teaching was readily accepted by his religious followers; in fact, it was this very thing which earned them their title or name-"Nicholites." The Nicholites' own interpretation of the origin of this name, originally given to them in scorn, was this: "We amongst many other Soules became believers in the light and in a reproachful and revileing manner was called Nicholites as much as to say followers of Nicholses light."  

  Lambert Hopkins, who accompanied Nichols on some of his preaching tours, reports that Nichols' preaching was "remark­ably powerful and afflicting to the wicked, and was made effec­tual to the reformation of many." Our one brief description of Nichols comes from Hopkins who many years after the death of Nichols wrote, "My acquaintance with Joseph Nichols com­menced somewhere about the year 1764 or 1765, when I was about twenty-three years of age, and continued during the space of seven or eight years; in which time considerable intimacy subsisted between us, I being, as it were, his son in the faith. He appeared to me to be between thirty and forty years of age. In stature, he was about middle size, dressed very plain, prin­cipally in undyed clothes." 7 In this opening period of his min­istry Joseph Nichols preached a doctrine of self-denial. It was his belief that all things which tended to exalt the "creature" must be regulated and subdued. This attitude can be seen also in the plain clothes which Hopkins remembered from his first contact with Joseph Nichols.