▶Date of birth:  8 April 1886        Place of birth: Stockton-on-Tees, Durham

▶Father:  Robert Marrington Nicholson     Mother: Annie Sugden

▶Spouse(s): Louisa Mary Ann Elliott     Date(s) of marriage: 3Q 1914      Place(s) of marriage: Stockton, Durham

▶Occupation: Clergyman (Wesleyan Methodist minister)

▶Lifestory: The Revd. William Nicholson trained for the Methodist ministry in his late twenties, and was appointed Superintendent minister of the Cheltenham district in 1939. He was born in Stockton-on-Tees in Durham in 1886, the second son of Robert Marrington Nicholson, who kept a furniture shop in Stockton, and his wife Anne (née Sugden). Nicholson was working, aged fourteen, at the time of the 1901 census as a Clerk at a steelworks.

A Wesleyan Methodist, Nicholson trained for the ministry at Handsworth Theological College, Birmingham, where he was a student by 1911. In 1914 he married Louisa Mary Ann (née Elliott); the couple had at least one son. By 1922 he was stationed in Newcastle-on-Tyne, and practised as a Minister from 1930 on the Shipley Circuit in Yorkshire, moving to Halifax St John’s Circuit, Tadcaster, in 1932, and by 1939 Huddersfield, where he was Second Minister on the Huddersfield (Gledholm) Circuit.

In the autumn of 1939 he became Superintendent Minister in the Cheltenham district, where one of his sons already worked in a bank and was on trial as a local preacher; between 1939 and 1945 the Revd. Nicholson lived with his family at 2 Clarence Square in Pittville, Cheltenham. In 1941 he was President of the Cheltenham Free Church Council.

Later stations included Grimsby in 1945 and Superintendent of the the Lewisham circuit in 1948, based at Hither Green. Nicholson died at Lewisham Hospital in Kent in 1952, at the age of sixty-six.

▶Moved to Pittville from:  Huddersfield      Moved from Pittville to: Grimsby

▶Date of death:    26 April 1952    Place of death: Lewisham Hospital

▶Date of burial:         Place of burial:

▶Notes:        ID: 13700

Contributor(s):  John Simpson