This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
NICHOLS.
NICHOLSON.
537

architecture, and devotes her life and interest as earnestly to the emancipation of architecture as her ancestors labored for the freedom of the colonies from England, or for the emancipation of the MINERVA PARKER NICHOLS. slaves in the South. Her husband is Reverend William J. Nichols, of Cambridge, Mass., a Unitarian clergyman located in Philadelphia, Pa. They were married on 22nd December, 1891. Her marriage will not interfere with her work as an architect. Besides her practical work in designing houses, she has delivered in the School of Design in Philadelphia a course of lectures for women on historic ornament and classic architecture. Among other important commissions received by her is one for the designing of the international club-house, to be called the Queen Isabella Pavilion, in Chicago, for the World's Columbian Exposition in 1893. In connection with that building there will be a hall, to be used as the social headquarters for women in the exposition grounds. She has had many obstacles to overcome, the chief of which was the difficulty in obtaining the technical and architectural training necessary to enable her to do her work well. She believes that architects should be licensed. Among the very first of women to enter the field of architecture, she was surprised to find that her sex was no drawback. Encouragement was freely given to her by other architects, and builders, contractors and mechanics were ready to carry out her designs. Her success is shown in the beautiful homes built on her designs in Johns- town, Radnor, Overbrook, Berwyn, Lansdowne, Moore's Station, Philadelphia and other Pennsylvania cities and towns.


NICHOLSON, Mrs. Eliza J., editor and business woman, born near Pearlington, Hancock county. Miss., in 1849. She is well known in literary circles by the pen-name "Pearl Rivers," and as the successful owner and manager of the New Orleans "Picayune." In her short life she has accomplished a wonderful work. ELIZA J. NICHOLSON. She is perhaps the only woman in the world who is at the head of a great daily political newspaper, shaping its course, suggesting its enterprises, and actually holding in her hands the reins of its government. Mrs. Nicholson was Eliza J. Poitevent, born of a fine old Huguenot family, whose descendants settled in Mississippi. Her childhood and girl-life were spent in a rambling old country house, near the brown waters of Pearl river. She was the only child on the place, a lonesome child with the heart of a poet, and she took to the beautiful southern woods and made them her sanctuary. She was a born poet, and it was not long before she found her voice and began to sing. She became a contributor to the New York "Home Journal" and other papers of high standing under the pen-name "Pearl Rivers " She is the poet-laureate of the bird and flower world of the South. Her first published article was accepted by John W. Overall, now literary editor of the New York "Mercury," from whom she received the confirmation of her own hope that she was born to be a writer. While still living in the country the free, luxurious life of the daughter of a wealthy southern gentleman, Miss Poitevent received an invitation from the editor of the " Picayune " to go to New Orleans as the literary editor of his paper. A newspaper woman was then unheard of in the South, and it is pleasant to know that the foremost woman editor of the South was also the pioneer woman journalist of the South. Miss Poitevent went on the staff of the " Picayune" with a salary of twenty-live dollars a week. The work suited her and she the work, and she found herself possessed of the journalistic faculty. After a time she became the wife of Col. A. M. Holbrook, the owner of the "Picayune." When her husband died, she was left with nothing in the world but a big. unwieldy newspaper, almost swamped in a sea of debt. The idea of turning her back on that new