The Nickerson Family Association Inc., located on Cape Cod in the State of Massachusetts, is a family association devoted to the Nickerson family name and the descendants of William & Anne ( Busby ) Nickerson. There are presently over 1200 dues paying members and over 350,000 families in our files, with an estimated 1,000,000+ indivuals.
In 1637 William and Anne (Busby) Nickerson arrived in Salem, Massachusetts, with their four children. In the colonies, William and Anne had five more children, putting down the roots of our family tree.
After briefly residing in Boston, they moved to Yarmouth in Plymouth Colony. While there, William purchased land of the Indians, and the Nickersons moved to Monomoick in 1664. William founded the first church (or meeting house) and held services in his home until a proper building could be built. He established the church because there was a question about which established village would tax the people of Monomoick. The village of Eastham levied taxes for their church, and Monomoick residents were forced to go to Eastham to attend services, an all-day trip. Since persecution by Bishop Knox is what drove stubborn old William out of England in the first place, he would have no more of it. His early work in Monomoick, which became the Town of Chatham in 1712, resulted in the formation of the present day Congregational Church in Chatham.
In 1895, William Emery Nickerson, a wealthy philanthropist, hired a genealogist to help him research his family tree. He discovered that he was the descendant of William and Anne (Busby) Nickerson, the first of the name in America. He also found that nearly all of the people with that surname living in America are descended from William and Anne. For the first Nickerson family reunion in 1897, William Emery Nickerson chartered a train to bring people to Chatham from Boston, and the 100th anniversary of that first reunion was held in 1997.
The Nickerson Family Association, a tax-exempt non-profit 501(3)(c) organization, has the primary goal of research and preservation of Nickerson genealogical information. We work with town hall records, old family Bibles, historical references, cemetery records, and sometimes verbal history in our research of William and Anne (Busby) Nickerson and their descendents.
We have thus far published four volumes of genealogical information, and the fifth, which will include generations up to the early 1900s, is in the works. There are approximately 75,000 names entered in the association computer, with information in other forms on an estimated 350,000 families and 1,000,000 or more individuals. The researching and cataloging of this information is done by some very dedicated people.
Member contributions were used to purchase land and restore a house donated to the association. This house is a stone's throw from the original home site of our founding ancestor, William Nickerson, and it is the association's Genealogical Research Center. All records and memorabilia are located at this site in Chathamport, Massachusetts. Our collection includes hundreds of volumes of records—based on more than 100 years of research—manuscripts of family trees, scrapbooks, hundreds of photographs, and other memorabilia involving Nickersons and related families (particularly of Cape Cod and Nova Scotia).
We hold an annual reunion that we call TOGETHERING. These reunions have attendance in the hundreds, and include people from all over the U.S. and Canada, many who come back each year. TOGETHERINGs are held on Cape Cod on the first weekend after U.S. Labor Day in September. Local gatherings of Nickersons also occur at various times and places in the U.S. and Canada.
Every Nickerson descendent or friend of the association is invited to share this great heritage and to help preserve it for future generations.
If you are interested in joining this vibrant organization, please send all your Nickerson lineage as described in this form.