March 6, 2026
Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry continues her series on Mayflower descendants, focusing again on Jennifer (Koehler) Mackall and featuring Warren Nickerson. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
Today I continue with the Nickerson and allied families of Barnstable County, Massachusetts, who married into the Pilgrim families who sailed on the Mayflower in 1620.
To recap: In Part 1 of this series I introduced William Nickerson and the early lands he acquired in Chatham, Massachusetts.
Below is a marker of the site of Nickerson’s home, located at the intersection of Orleans Road (Massachusetts Route 28) and Crows Pond Road in Chatham.
The inscription reads:
Site of First Settler’s Home
The house of William Nickerson, built about 1664, stood south 51 degrees west at a distance of 19 1/5 rods (about 105 yards) from this marker. He was the first settler in Monomoit where he purchased from the Indians most of what is now Chatham.
“Wee do not desire to live alone, but are willing to receive soe many inhabitants as theire is land to accommodate them with, soe that wee may goe on in a way of peace and love for the glory of God, and the good and welfare of the government, and the inlargement thereof and the good one of another.”
William Nickerson to the court at Plymouth, 4 July 1663
Erected by the Chatham Historical Society, 1980
My subject today is Warren Sears Nickerson (1880-1966), a tenth-generation descendant of William Nickerson, the youngest out of 12 children born to Warren Jenson Nickerson and Mary B. (Atkins) Nickerson of East Harwich, Massachusetts, and a direct descendant of Mayflower passengers Elder William Brewster, Mary Brewster, John Tilley, Joan Tilley, Elizabeth Tilley, Stephen Hopkins, Gyles Hopkins, Constance Hopkins, and John Howland.
Below is a wooden plaque that accompanies a model ship of the Mayflower, built by Warren Nickerson’s son-in-law George Pearson Marble, presented by his grandson Warren Nickerson Marble “in memory of his Grandfather Warren Sears Nickerson.” It lists all the Mayflower passengers this Nickerson line has in the family tree.
Warren Nickerson was a historian and antiquarian. Delores Bird Carpenter compiled some of his research and published Early Encounters: Native Americans and Europeans in New England, from the Papers of W. Sears Nickerson, which documented New England tribes such as the Nawset-Potanumacuts, Monomoyicks, Satuckets, Mattakeesit-Nobscussets, and Pawmets.
The primary sources Nickerson relied on for his research came from genealogist Stanley W. Smith, a former historian for the Massachusetts Society of Mayflower Descendants.
Many letters from Nickerson to Smith are housed in the Stanley W. Smith Collection at Sturgis Library in Barnstable, Massachusetts.
I found an obituary for Nickerson with his photo, who died on 8 January 1966 in Florida.
This article reports:
Warren Sears Nickerson, 85, 406 N. Beach St., Ormond Beach, a retired gift shop owner, and a direct descendant of nine [Pilgrims] who crossed the Atlantic in the Mayflower in 1620, died yesterday at Halifax Hospital.
He came here 35 years ago from Wellesley Hills, Mass., where he operated a funeral home. He operated a lending library and gift shop known as Wayside Gift Shop for 15 years in Daytona Beach.
Previous to coming to the Halifax area, he had been a member of the Board of Selectmen in Harwich, Mass., treasurer of the Cape Cod Chamber of Commerce, president of the Barnstable County Chapter of the American Red Cross, and a director of the Cape Cod Trust Co.
He was a Mason for over 50 years and received his 50-year pin several years ago. He was, at one time, master of the Pilgrim Lodge, F&AM, and acting high priest of the Sylvester Baxter Royal Arch Lodge, Harwich.
After his Massachusetts business career ended in 1925, he took up genealogy as a hobby and also wrote a book Land Ho! 1620, which is considered by officials of the museum in Provincetown, Mass., to be the most authoritative account of the [Pilgrims’] journey to these shores.
At the time of the arrival of the Mayflower II [in 1957], he was presented with a commemorative medal by the Cape Cod Pilgrims Memorial Assn.
It was the same medal given to Capt. Alan Villiers and his crew who sailed the Mayflower II across the Atlantic; Pres. Eisenhower; both senators from Massachusetts; and the Queen of England.
A letter accompanying the medal stated that it was being presented to Nickerson “in view of his interest in [Pilgrim] lore and what you have done to perpetuate their history.”
He helped form the first Florida branch of the Society of Mayflower Descendants [the Elder William Brewster Colony] and served as its governor from 1940 to 1942.
Survivors include his wife, Donna; three daughters: Mrs. Dorothy Ross, Madison, N. J.; Mrs. Mary Marble, South Orleans Mass.; and Mrs. Jean Primavera, Germantown, Md.; a sister, Mrs. Geneva A. Eldredge, Wareham, Mass.; and seven grandchildren.
Below is a newsclip of Nickerson which features his photo. He was keeping a daily chart of the ocean crossing of the Mayflower II. He told the press:
“They were a tough bunch, and if you want to know what a Pilgrim looked like, take a look at me.”
Nickerson married Imogene Howes Small in 1905, and 2nd Donna May Corliss.
Stay tuned for more Nickerson family lines…
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Note on the header image: “Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor,” by William Halsall, 1882. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.
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