46 Facts About Edward Nicolls

Edward Nicolls was born in Coleraine, Ireland into a family with a military tradition; his father was surveyor of excise in Coleraine, and his maternal grandfather was a rector.

Edward Nicolls spent his life as an intensely devout Ulster Protestant.

Edward Nicolls set up a base at Prospect Bluff, on the Apalachicola River, and had a sturdy fort built there, where he recruited a black and Native American Corps of Colonial Marines.

Edward Nicolls returned to Britain with a Treaty of Nicolls' Outpost he had negotiated, but failed to receive support from his government for any further aid to his erstwhile native allies.

In 1835, Edward Nicolls retired from the Royal Marines with the rank of a lieutenant colonel.

Edward Nicolls was born in 1779 in Coleraine, Ireland, the son of Jonathan Nicolls and Anna Cuppage.

Jonathan Edward Nicolls was for a time controller of excise for Coleraine.

On 5 November 1803, during the blockade of Saint-Domingue, Lieutenant Edward Nicolls took a 12-man cutting-out party in the cutter from HMS Blanche and captured the French cutter Albion from under the battery at Monte Christi.

In 1804 Edward Nicolls led another boat assault in the capture of a French brig, and led a landing party of Royal Marines in the successful siege of Franco-Dutch forces at Curacao.

On 25 July 1805, Edward Nicolls was promoted to the rank of captain, and assigned command of a company which embarked in HMS Standard.

In 1809, Edward Nicolls commanded HMS Standards marines while the ship participated in the Gunboat War.

On 8 August 1810, Edward Nicolls received the brevet rank of major.

Edward Nicolls was to operate from a position established in April 1814 at Prospect Bluff.

The numbers of Colonial Marines and Redstick Creeks are difficult to ascertain, although Edward Nicolls did arrive in Florida with 300 British uniforms and 1000 muskets.

Manrique cooperated with Edward Nicolls, allowing him to train and drill Muscogee Creek refugees.

Edward Nicolls still attempted to broaden the forces on the side of the British, and he is mentioned as participating in attempts to recruit Jean Lafitte to the British cause.

At the Battle of New Orleans on 8 January 1815, Edward Nicolls was attached, with some of his men, to the brigade commanded by Colonel William Thornton of the 85th Regiment of Foot.

Edward Nicolls engaged in a heated exchange of letters with US Indian Agent Benjamin Hawkins.

Hawkins accused Edward Nicolls of being overzealous and of overstepping his authority in his personal defense of Redstick Creeks, Seminoles, and their maroon Creole allies, whom some Americans in authority viewed as nothing more than runaway slaves, lost or unclaimed property.

Edward Nicolls received orders to withdraw his troops from the fort.

Edward Nicolls deliberately did not remove any weapons or ordnance from the well-supplied fort, leaving it in the hands of those members of his-disbanded Corps of Colonial Marines who chose to remain.

Edward Nicolls left in mid-May 1815 with the Redstick Creek Francis the Prophet, known as Josiah Francis and Hillis Hadjo, the Native American spiritual and political leader known for his role in the Battle of Holy Ground, seeking official imprimatur for the treaty Edward Nicolls had negotiated.

Edward Nicolls had been heading to the Bahamas, and had unintentionally ended up in East Florida.

In leaving West Florida, according to the US Indian Agent Hawkins, Edward Nicolls had left local forces with the arms and means to resist advancing American encroachments which were leading up to Andrew Jackson's First Seminole War.

In England, Edward Nicolls failed to obtain official support for the Creeks, and the Treaty of Edward Nicolls' Outpost was never ratified.

Edward Nicolls had housed Francis and his son himself and bought them cold-weather clothing out of his own funds, and Francis' son remained with Edward Nicolls to get an English education.

Edward Nicolls was chastised by British government officials for bringing the two Creeks to England, "productive of great Inconvenience and Expence, and entirely unauthorized".

Edward Nicolls was made a brevet lieutenant colonel on 12 August 1819.

In 1823, Edward Nicolls became the first commandant of remote and uninhabited Ascension Island, a small volcanic island in the South Atlantic, halfway between South America and Africa.

From 1815 until Edward Nicolls took over, the Royal Navy registered the island as a "small Sloop of 50 or 60 Men", HMS Ascension, since the Navy was forbidden to govern colonies.

Water was scarce, and an important task for Edward Nicolls was to ensure that the island had a stable source of water.

Edward Nicolls achieved this by installing systems of pipes and carts to bring water to the settlement from the few springs in the mountains.

Edward Nicolls understood this, and gave large rations of grog when his men showed what he called "spirited and Soldierlike feelings".

Edward Nicolls was busied by many infrastructure projects on the island, building roads, water tanks, a storehouse, and developing the gardens on Green Mountain.

Edward Nicolls had many such grand schemes for trade between Britain and its colonies, but these all failed to materialize.

Edward Nicolls was given the substantive rank of major before leaving, on 8 May 1828.

Edward Nicolls received the appointment after colonial administrator and anti-slave trade crusader William Fitzwilliam Owen had refused the post, and after merchant John Beecroft was deemed unfit for the post.

Edward Nicolls, in turn, attacked Beecroft for his dealings with former slavers.

Edward Nicolls's health suffered in Fernando Po and by April 1830 he had left for Ascension.

When Edward Nicolls returned to England ill, Beecroft was placed in temporary charge of the island.

Edward Nicolls considered those slaves who killed in the course of their escapes as legally and morally justified in their action, nor did he regard them as thieves for having seized canoes to escape in.

Edward Nicolls offered to return any stolen canoes, and wrote that if Ferreira could persuade any of the escapees to return voluntarily to a state of slavery, he would not impede them.

Edward Nicolls wrote to The Times during the debate which followed the Creole case, in which slaves transported aboard the American vessel Creole had taken control of her and forced the crew to take them to a British-run port.

Edward Nicolls retired from the Royal Marines, and was given the substantive rank of lieutenant colonel, on 15 May 1835.

In 1809, while still a young captain of Marines, Edward Nicolls married Miss Eleanor Bristow, who was from northern Ireland.

Edward Nicolls died at his residence in Blackheath, London on 5 February 1865.