Welcome and Hints for Navigating this Blog (click here).

Welcome to this new blog featuring archival photos and scanned documents passed down to from my father's side of the family tree.  Nearly all material is from records of Eaton and Madison NH.  Surnames in my tree include Nickersons, Forrests, Warrens, Kenerson, Drew, Kennett, Knowles and many more that will be familiar to those with similar ancestral roots.

 Click on the Title, heading or photograph of each post to read the full text of the post.

Click "Subscribe" if you would like to get email alerts of new posts to the site.

Most recent posts appear first at the top of the screen window. Click on the title to read the full text.

In the upper left hand corner of the blog title are three gray lines.  Click on this to view my profile. Click "Archive" to view dates and titles of past posts.

If you want more information, have suggestions or have photos or texts that you would like to add, please let me know.  I invite interaction and connection.  That is the whole point of this blog--bringing the "cousins" together and sharing our history with others.

 ( And lastly, I am not very computer savvy so if you know how to post video or documents such as pfds I would like to know.)

          _______________________________________________________________________

My Story:

My Dad Warren Nickerson was born in the part of Madison known as Silver Lake and moved with his father Walter Nickerson, mother Arvilla (Forrest) Warren Nickerson and his two older brothers Andrew and Alden to Portsmouth NH (where I was born) when he was a boy. The house where he spent his early years, which my mother says was built by Walter and Arvilla, is at the corner of Route 41 and 113.

My father treasured his ties to his many aunts, uncles and cousins in Carroll County.  Dad worked on the Portsmouth Naval Shipyard yet he and a bunch of other young men with roots in Madison would head "upcountry" on weekends to play in the baseball league.

I remember many hours of crawling on my hands and knees through the alders on visits with my Dad or my Grandfather Walter Nickerson.  It involved inhaling black flies in order to drop a worm into some dark hole behind a boulder in one of several brooks that we frequented.  I marveled at my father's patience waiting for that tug on the line, sweat dripping off his nose, black flies and mosquitoes swarming around him. 

We usually came home with our "limit" of brookies wrapped in fragrant ferns, while the women picked mayflowers.  I think I still have the basket that held my grandmother's chicken salad sandwiches on dark bread that she brought along on the trip.

My mother and I still make annual visits to the Madison Cemetery to continue the family tradition of putting flowers on the graves of my grandparents and great-grandparents.

Unfortunately I did not have my father's patience for listening to my grandfather recite the generations of Nickersons like the books of the Bible nor much patience for his stories of old people that I had never met or barely knew.

Now I am ready for the conversations but sadly that time has passed and my Dad is gone as well.

 Luckily my paternal Grandmother Arvilla Forrest Warren Nickerson saved everything.  And luckily my mother Ellen Nickerson has been a faithful ally to the Nickerson/Forrest clans and is recently clearing her attic and passing the ancestral treasures on to me.

I think I inherited a total of $10 from my grandparents but the records of history that Arvilla has shared are priceless.

So as a teaser of good things to come on this blog my grandmother saved:

Notes from the town meetings of Eaton of the late 1700's, Isaiah Forrest's War of 1812 Adjutant order book, forty years of records of the Madison company of the New Hampshire Militia from 1812 to 1852, a letter from Mark Nickerson on his whaling trips and a daily diary of Luke Nickerson of his service in the Civil War from the time he left Madison until two weeks before he died of malaria in an army hospital two weeks after the battle of Fredricksburg.  His perspective on the destruction of the South, from the point of view of a farmer, is very moving.

My grandmother Arvilla always spoke fondly and with pride of Old Home Week and her Forrest family's contributions to that event and to the town.  My Mom recently found a bunch of old brochures from those events which will eventually make their way to the town of Madison archives.

She was very proud of her mother Harriette Forrest Warren who was a founding member of Silver Lake Women's Club along with her Aunt's Emma and Jennie who ran the Silver Lake House.  She was very much raised by her aunt's and extended Forrest family as her Mother was away teaching in the one-room school houses of Carroll County New Hampshire for many of her childhood years.

I have already passed some of these records on to the Madison Library, including essays written by Arvilla's mother and aunts for reading at meetings of the Women's Club.

As with any family there were hard things that happened throughout the 7 or so generations of Eaton/Madison residents that preceded me.  Things that were not talked about to young boys.   So there are big gaps in my knowledge of my ancestors and to some extent to the different branches of my family tree.

I have spent the last ten years or so trying to fill in some of those blanks, deepen my knowledge and appreciation of ALL of my ancestors as a way of understanding how I came to be who I am.

You are welcome to view my DannickersonME Tree on Ancestry. com.

My greatest pleasure in this work has been to reunite and/or to meet for the first time other members of my extended family and their descendants.  Nickersons, Forrests, Drews, Kennetts, Kenerson's and many other surnames are to be found on that tree.

I hope on this blog to share the photos and documents that I have, many scanned pages of my ancestors family trees and stories, postcards, newpaper clippings etc. and to bring even more of us together in a common appreciation of who we are and where we came from.

I am deeply appreciative my many relatives--some of whom I am meeting for the first time--who have been so encouraging in sharing stories (more than I can remember) and artifacts of our past.

I hesitate to single out any right now but as I go you the readers will get to know many of them.

Much appreciation is due to the Madison Historical Society and to the Madison Library, and their employees and supporters.

Please feel free to contact me with information, corrections or questions.
 

Mark Nickerson and Caroline Kennett Nickerson--photo I believe from Lois Jenkins --Nickerson genealogist of our common Great-Great Grandparents and their descendants.