Nichols Farms Historic District - Abraham Nichols

Abraham Nichols

It was previously thought that Abraham Nichols made the first permanent settlement within Trumbull around 1690 or 1700, depending on the source, and that others soon followed venturing into the wilderness to establish mills, churches, and schools. Abraham Nichols landholdings were said to total 1,000 acres (4.0 km2) with much of it remaining in the Nichols family for over two centuries. The last of the line was Florence Nichols who married George Woods in 1903. Soon after their deaths in 1973 and 1972 respectively, the property was deeded to the Nichols Methodist Church from whom the town of Trumbull purchased it in 1974. This tract was then known as the Woods Estate and is now the home of the Trumbull Historical Society. Recent research has determined that Nichols holdings actually were around 285 acres (1.15 km2) of land of which 55 acres (0.22 km2) remains as open space today.

According to Walter Nicholls, who wrote the History of the Nichols family in 1909, Abraham did not accompany his father to Woodbury in 1673, but remained in Trumbull to oversee the plantation. However, since Abraham was only eleven at the time (born 1662), it is likely that he did remove to Woodbury with his family and returned to Trumbull between 1696 and 1700.

Walter Nicholls colorful description of the Nichols homestead;

About 1700 Abraham Nicholls erected for himself a homestead upon his lordly domain, and which, according to the description vouchsafed by persons now living, who chanced to view it while yet standing in the early part of the nineteenth century, was an immense gambrel-roofed structure of a rambling style of architecture, situated upon an eminence, affording an unobstructed vista of the surrounding landscape and at the southward, about four miles distant, the shimmering bosom of Long Island Sound. There it stood for decades, without a neighboring habitation within a circuit of several miles; while the sepulchral quietude of its surroundings was rarely broken, even by the echo of a sound adequate to dispel the day dreams, or waken the nocturnal slumbers of its peaceful inhabitants, save that of the casual lowing of kine, the appealing cadence of the whop-poor-will at nightfall, or the grewsome howling of wolves. . . .It is a subject of profound regret on the part of many of the descendents of Abraham Nicholls that neither his will nor the inventory of his estate can be found of record.

According to Stratford land records, Abraham Nichols purchased several old farms and large parcels of land in 1696. Nichols exchanged his land for 22 acres (0.089 km2) of Lt. Joseph Judsons old farm which had a barn on it, 54 acres (0.22 km2) or half the land owned by Jeremiah Judson, and 19 acres (0.077 km2) of land from Benjamin Curtiss. These transactions are described in the land records as being located at or near the Old farm, Judson's farm's or Lt. Joseph Judson farm. Furthermore, in 1699, Lt. Ebenezer Curtiss recorded 15 acres (0.061 km2) of land from the three-mile division that was bounded west with Lt. Joseph Judson's farm, now belonging to Abraham Nichols. This deed confirms that Nichols purchased Judson's old farm, established in 1658, and was not the first to settle the area.

In 1704, Nichols purchased Reverend Zachariah Walker's entire farm which was 36 acres (0.15 km2) in size. In 1708, Nichols bought 5 acres (0.020 km2) known as Mischa Hill Meadow from Joseph Fairchild and in 1715 he added 1 acre (0.0040 km2) from Captain John Hawley. These three large farms when combined with Nichols own division land and other parcels, totaled around 285 acres (1.15 km2) of land. Some of the old farms, about 54 acres (0.22 km2), remain as open space today.