Michael N. Nye, a thrifty farmer living about one mile east from Forest, should be ranked as one of the pioneers of this section and is surely to be credited with a public spirit and good labors in improvement and building up the country.
Michael N. Nye was born in Kosciusko County, Indiana, on February 17, 1847, being the son of Michael Nye, a brick mason, who was born in Pennsylvania, in 1808, and a pioneer in Indiana. He married Elizabeth, daughter of Peter and Nancy Kimes, who were also, pioneers of Indiana. Besides our subject there were born to this marriage six children: Omar, Jasper, Nancy Disher, Rebecca Vanator, Rowan, Mary Magrin.
Michael N. was educated in the common schools and remained with his parents until he was sixteen and, then enlisted in Company A, Seventy-fourth Indiana Infantry. He served eighteen months and then was discharged on a general order, on July 25, 1865. He returned home, where he remained for two years, then went to Iowa in the fall of 1867, traveling also in Kansas and Nebraska until the beginning of 1871. Then he returned to Marshall County, Indiana, and married Miss Eliza, daughter of Charles H., a native of Kentucky, and Sarah E. Patterson, a native of Indiana. The father died on January 1, 1870, and the mother died on February 4. 1894, leaving seven children: Mrs. Nye, Mary J. Chapman, George A., Blair M., Nancy E. Harvert, James W., Arrilda Bell. In 1876 Mr. Nye went to Iowa with his family, farmed there two years and then went to Kansas and took a homestead. They remained there and in town adjacent until 1888, when they came to Idaho and located on his present place, which has been the family home since. The land was unsurveyed when they came and they held by squatter’s right but filed in 1896. They have a portion of the farm cultivated, about seventeen head of stock and buildings and fencing.
Mr. Nye is an active supporter of good schools and has given his children a college education. Politically, he is allied with the Republicans and is intelligent in the issues of the campaigns both of state and nation. Four children have been born to this couple: Zoa A., at the present time head nurse in the Mountain Mew sanitarium in Spokane: Bertha, also a trained nurse; Charles A., a stockman on the Salmon River; Minnie E., a graduate of the State Normal School at Lewiston. The young ladies who are nursing are both graduates of the Battle Creek school for nurses and are skillful in their work.
Back to: Nez Perce Biographies
Source: An Illustrated History of Northern Idaho, Embracing Nez Perce, Idaho, Latah, Kootenai and Shoshone Counties, Western Historical Publishing Company, 1903