The Ellen G. White Letters and Manuscripts: Volume 1

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NICHOLS, Henry Otis (1828-1917) and (first wife) Harriet (1836-1880) and (second wife) Harriet L. (1853-1917)

A close acquaintance of Ellen White's in his youth, Henry Nichols was the son of Otis and Mary Nichols. During 1845-1846, while Henry was in his late teens and probably living at home, the Nicholses opened up their home in Dorchester, Massachusetts, for Ellen Harmon (White) for some eight months while she traveled in the vicinity relating her visions. In a poignant autobiographical account Ellen White recalls how in late 1846 or early 1847, after she had returned to Maine and fallen dangerously ill, the Nicholses sent Henry “bringing things for my comfort.” During a prayer session for her recovery, “Bro. Henry commenced praying … and with the power of God resting upon him … laid his hands upon my head, saying, ‘Sister Ellen, Jesus Christ maketh thee whole,’ and fell back prostrated by the power of God. I believed that the work was of God, and the pain left me. My heart was filled with gratitude and peace.” 1EGWLM 872.1

No doubt as a token of their friendship with the Nichols family, James and Ellen White named their first son Henry Nichols White. According to the reminiscences of Charles F. Stevens, Henry Nichols assisted James White with the publishing of the Review during the winter of 1850-1851 in Paris, Maine. Several poems and letters to the editor from Henry Nichols were published in the Review during the early 1850s in addition to subscription receipts, etc. Little is heard, however, of Henry Nichols, after 1855. The reason, Ellen White explained in 1862, was that “doubts and difficulties [were] thrown into Henry Nichols’ mind, which have destroyed his interest and faith in the visions and in us.” Ironically, she maintained that it was J. N. Andrews, later a strong supporter of the visions, a General Conference president, and first official Seventh-day Adventist missionary to Europe, who instilled the doubts into Henry Nichols’ mind “at the time of the removal of the Office,” i.e., in 1855 when the Review office was moved from Rochester, New York, to Battle Creek, Michigan. (J. N. Andrews, under influence from his family, had doubts about the authenticity of the visions for a period of time during the 1850s.) Writing in 1903 to Henry Nichols, Ellen White made it fairly clear that Nichols subsequently abandoned Sabbathkeeping for many years, but began to keep it again in his old age, shortly before 1903. Whether he then continued to keep the Sabbath till his death in 1917 is not known. 1EGWLM 872.2

See: In the Footsteps of the Pioneers (Silver Spring, Md.: Ellen G. White Estate, 1990), p. 51; J. G. Swift and Harrison Ellery, The Memoirs of Gen. Joseph Gardner Swift … to Which is Added a Genealogy of the Family of Thomas Swift of Dorchester, Mass. (Worcester, Mass.: Press of F. S. Blanchard & Co., 1890), p. 40 (of the genealogy section); C. F. Stevens, “From the Oldest Reader of the ‘Review,’” Review, Aug. 21, 1919, p. 27; Ellen G. White, Spiritual Gifts [vol. 2], p. 84; Lt 11, 1862 (Nov. 9); To Brother J. N. Andrews and Sister H. N. Smith (PH016), p. 19; Lt 99, 1903 (May 24). 1EGWLM 872.3