South Square, Sneem, Kerry, Ireland

Thomas Nicholson, the immigrant ancestor of the large Nicholson clan of Lynn, was born in 1872 in the small village of Sneem, County Kerry, Ireland. At the age of 20 he emigrated aboard the steamship "Servia" from Queenstown, Ireland to New York arriving on July 5, 1892 and was naturalized at Boston on Sep 29, 1894.

Soon after arriving in Lynn Thomas purchased a house at 60 North Federal Street in Lynn which became the Nicholson family home for many years. The house was on a very large piece of land where Thomas planted corn over a 40 year period and ran a grocery store in the garage where he featured his home-grown corn and barrels of his apples along with other Nicholson specialties.

On December 15, 1897 Thomas married Sarah Eleanor Glass, daughter of Benjamin Franklin Glass of Marblehead, Massachusetts and Mary Eliza Hook of Danvers, Massachusetts. Sarah's mother died Oct 16, 1882 when Sarah was only one year old. Her father, Benjamin, declared he was unable to care for her and put her up for adoption. Sarah was adopted by her grandfather, Samuel K. Glass of Marblehead on Apr 11, 1889 and lived in Marblehead until she married Thomas Nicholson in 1897.

Together Thomas and Sarah raised 16 children in the North Federal St. house, 15 of whom survived into adulthoodand, and they had 66 grandchildren. Thomas made a practice of adding another room almost every time a new child arrived in the family seldomly hiring a professional carpenter for the job, but giving the work to anyone who owed him a grocery bill at the time. Consequently, the rooms always refused to line up plumb and the house was full of surprising step-ups and step-downs so that a stranger must watch his step or he was likely to sprain an ankle if he took the house for granted. And because of this same casual attitude toward home construction, no two windows in the house were of the same dimensions with special tailoring projects required when a repair job arose. The original house, before his expanding family required additional facilities, consisted of four rooms upstairs and four down, a bake oven and a central chimney. The summer kitchen downstairs dated traditionally from the late 1700's and exhibited beamed ceilings and wide pumpkin pine floorboards.

60 North Federal St., Lynn

Thomas Nicholson passed away in 1924 at Lynn. Sarah (Glass) Nicholson re-married William Lee of Fall River, Massachusetts in 1932. They moved from North Federal Street to West Neptune Street in Lynn and had no children. The Federal St. house was then occupied for a number of years by several Nicholson relatives including cousin Grace (Dorman) Raynes and her husband Frederick Raynes. The property was eventually sold and fell into disrepair, then abandoned and totally destroyed by fire.