Clara Nickels (baby), (1874)

Headstone GPS Coordinates: 

Birth: birthdate unknown, Seabeck, Kitsap County, Washington

Death: July 16, 1874, Seabeck, Kitsap County, Washington

Relatives in Seabeck Cemetery: Samuel Nickels, Clara Nickels née Berry, Augusta “Gussie” Nickels, Frank Nickels

American Revolutionary War Patriots*: Nathaniel Berry (Massachusetts) 

DAR# A009622; Samuel Edward Berry (Massachusetts) DAR# A009627; William Nickels (Massachusetts)

Disclaimer: These lines have not been officially proven by NSDAR standards

Baby Clara Nickels was born to Samuel and Clara Nickels during the family’s early years in Washington Territory. Though little record remains of her short time on earth, her story forms one of the earliest sorrows in the Nickels family history.

Her parents, Samuel Nickels and Clara Ella Berry, were both born in Kennebec County, Maine — Samuel on July 22, 1842, in Pittston, and Clara on April 13, 1845, in Gardiner. They married in 1864 and soon began building their family. After the birth of their first two daughters, Alice Gertrude and Augusta “Gussie,” they left Maine for the West. By 1870, they had settled in Seabeck, Washington Territory, where Samuel worked in the sawmill of the growing mill town along Hood Canal.

Seabeck in the early 1870s was still very much a frontier community — isolated, dependent on logging and shipping, and limited in medical resources. It was during these early territorial years that Baby Clara was born.

Jacob Hauptly wrote in his diaries on July 16, 1874:  “Nickels child died today.”

Clara’s exact date of birth was not recorded. The 1900 federal census later recorded that Clara Nickels had given birth to seven children, but only six were living. 

Family history notes that Baby Clara was buried in Seabeck Cemetery with a simple wooden marker that is long gone. No stone was erected to bear her name, and no obituary marked her passing.