Home of Two Generations of Nichols Sisters
80 Federal Street
(now, the Pierce-Nichols House, a property of the Peabody Essex
Museum)
Since it was first built by Samuel McIntire in the early 1780s,
this house has essentially stayed in the hands of successive generations
of Pierces and Nichols, keeping its lovely interiors and furnishings
largely intact by the time it was given to the Essex Institute (now,
the Peabody Essex Museum) for preservation in the early 1900s. Two
sets of unmarried sisters lived in this house over the years. The
first set was composed of Sarah (d. 1879), Lydia (d. 1894), Elizabeth
(d. 1897), and Mary Jane (d. 1902) Nichols, known as the “Aunties,”
who lived here in the late 1800s. The last owners were Martha, Charlotte
Sanders (d. 1935), and Sarah Augusta Nichols, who would become known
as the “Maidens.” They first arrived here in 1888 with
their father, John H. Nichols, three years after their mother, Sarah
Augusta Leach Nichols, passed away in 1885. The daughters were well
educated and had traveled in Europe, and would now live out their
lives here on Federal Street. In his monograph written for the Essex
Institute, Gerald Ward wrote, “these ladies lived on in the
fading splendor of their family home, which had already been recognized
as an architectural gem of unusual merit.”47
As they grew older, the sisters began searching for a buyer who
would preserve their home and relieve them of the financial burden
it posed. Upon hearing of the interest of the Society for the Preservation
of New England Antiquities in the house, the Essex Institute quickly
marshalled its forces and made the sisters an offer of ten thousand
dollars outright, along with the cost of maintenance, and, most
importantly, the guarantee to the sisters of life tenancy. In 1917,
the Nichols sisters deeded the house to the Essex Institute “for
educational purposes as a fine example of Colonial architecture”
to “be open to the inspection of the public,” but not
until the last Nichols sister died.48
Notes
47. Gerald W. R. Ward, The Pierce-Nichols
House, (Salem, Mass., Essex Institute, 1976), 34.
48. Ibid., 36.
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