Brumley family -Mary Nancy Skirvin is my 3rd great-grandmother and she was born in Gallatin County, Kentucky on July 11, 1809. She went by her middle name Nancy. Her parents were Clayton Skirvin and Rebecca Looney. She was the first child born to her parents. Her siblings are Robert L 1811, Joel J 1813, Louisa C, 1815, Alfred L 1818, Rebecca Jane 1820, Henry Clayton 1825, Mary 1829, and William C Skirvin 1835.
Nancy Skirvin grew up in Gallatin County where she meant and married her husband, Reuben Nichols, on April 19, 1827. She was eighteen years old and he was twenty-one.
Sometime after their marriage, they relocated to Dry Ridge, Grant County, Kentucky where my great-great-grandfather, Simon Nichols became their first child and first son. Other siblings soon followed James Harvey 1829, Mary Jane 1831, John “Jackson” Clayton 1834, William Henry 1836, George Thomas 1839, Francis Marion 1841, Rebecca Margaret 1843, Louisa Susan 1846, Nancy Ann 1849, and Sarah Elizabeth Nichols in 1851.
By the 1850 Census the family was living in the area they would call their final home, Clark County, Missouri. Reuben Nichols purchased acreage in 1849 in Clark County, Missouri. The Census of 1850, 1860, 1870 and 1880 shows the family living in the county. During the years they lived there it was bittersweet, Reuben and Nancy lost four of their children, James Harvey in 1857 and Louisa Susan in 1870, Mary Jane 1871 and Simon Nichols in 1884. Part of the farmland that Reuben purchased was used as a family cemetery.
There is no cause for Nancy or Reuben’s death but they died within days of each other. Reuben Nichols died on December 7, 1888, and Mary Nancy Skirvin Nichols died on December 10, 1888. They are both buried in the small Nichols Family Graveyard near Williamstown in Clark County, Missouri. Over the years the farm has been sold and the family cemetery was plowed over with broken headstones. The community members, as well as family members, took it upon themselves to restore the small cemetery back to its original location. I remember when someone called my Aunt Shirley Ann Brumley Stevens to tell her there was going to be a dedication of the cemetery and she was invited to come and share her Nichols stories with everyone. She was so pleased that they had restored the cemetery.
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Brumley Family Branches 