Son of Eli Nichols and Jane Fallis-Nichols, husband of Rachel Loyd-Nichols.

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From Find A Grave contributor Richard E. Creger:

You can see the original at https://archive.org/stream/historyofcoshoct00hill#page/n1/mode/2up on page 100.

ELI NICHOLS, late of New Castle township, was born in Louden county, Virginia, in 1799, and died on his farm at Walhonding in 1871. He married Miss Rachel Loyd, born in 1801, at Cattiwassa, Pennsylvania, and she died in 1869. They became the parents of fifteen children : Rebecca N., Jessa, Charles, Jane, Mary, Loyd, Paxton, Eliza, Eugene, Susan, Hortense, Lucy, Ellen, Lundy, and Collins. Loyd now owns all of the large landed property formerly owned by his father. Eli Nichols resided fourteen years on his floral and nursery farm at Loyd, near St. Clairsville, Ohio. He practiced at the St. Clairsville bar, and represented Belmont county in the Legislature while there. He came to this county in 1844, and moved on his large landed estate, the largest in the county, at Walhonding.

Eli Nichols was a lawyer by profession, and a man not only of eminent learning and ability in his profession, but one who devoted much of his time to the study of the government and its institutions, and who possessed broad and comprehensive views of the State and National questions which entered into the politics of his time. He was always a strong and fearless advocate of universal liberty, and of the doctrine of equality before the law. He hated oppression of every kind; he early entertained an instinctive and uncompromising hostility to American slavery, and for many years, when it cost a man political odium and ostracism to acknowledge himself an abolitionist, he gloried in the name, and was one of the few who had the courage and the patriot-
ism, in those benighted days of the Republic, to stand up and denounce the institution of slavery as a national evil, and a crime. When he lived at Loyd, his home was a depot on the underground railroad. Once when a negro family, ticketed for freedom, was concealed at his house, a slave owner on the track of some runaway slaves, supposed that this family was the one he was after, and he, with about fifty sympathizers, prepared to attack the depot. One hundred abolitionists rallied to Mr. Nichols' support. In the meantime the attacking party learned that they were
on the wrong scent, and abandoned the field, and the frightened colored travelers passed on unmolested. Mr. Nichols was egged several times while making abolition speeches. He made his voice heard and his influence felt through the press and from the rostrum against this national
curse, and perhaps did as much as any other man in Ohio to educate public sentiment in the right direction on this subject. In the latter part of his life he retired from his profession and moved with his family on a large landed estate at Walhonding, where he resided until his death.
Eli Nichols had great decision of character, and independence of thought and action. His convictions were strong, and he was always ready to maintain them, regardless of popular opinion; dissimulation and sycophancy found no place in his composition, but he was always bold to assert
what he believed to be right, and was frank, open, undisguised in his intercourse with others. He was possessed of a high order of mental faculties; a clear, comprehensive mind, with quick perception. He was energetic, self-reliant, generally a leader, influential, and a fluent and forcible public speaker.

Mr. Nichols was brought up a Quaker, afterward became liberal in his religious views, and in the latter part of his life espoused Spiritualism.