1889 - 1915

1.  Early Days
2.  West Yorkshire Regiment
3.  Lancers of the Line
4.  British Expeditionary Forces
5.  1914-1915 Home and Abroad
6.  Missing Presumed Dead
7.  In Memorial

In 1909, at 20 years of age, Edward Nicholson was described as being 5 foot 6¾ inches tall with a fresh complexion, brown eyes and brown hair.

Despite his seemingly small stature (although that was close to average for those times) he covered a lot of territory and packed a lot of experience into his relatively short life.

Born to working-class parents in Briggate, Knaresborough, a very picturesque town in what was then called the West Riding of Yorkshire, he worked as a farm-hand before joining the army. His military service took him to South Africa. Later, as a private citizen he traveled to Canada, and then back in uniform for the Great War, he was tragically killed in the trenches of Normandy.

Early Days

Edward was born in 1889 in Knaresborough, Yorkshire, the second child and only son of Joseph and Elizabeth (nee Cundell). Edward first appears on the 1891 census in Harrogate, living with his parents, older sister Rose, and his 10 year old aunt, Sarah. The family had moved to New Park, at a time when that area was going through a lot of new building and development.

Edwards father, Joseph, was a general labourer, and New Park offered a variety of work for an unskilled man. The gasworks were nearby, and there were a few quarries, taking the local sandstone to build the houses so distinctive to the area. 

By the next census, in 1901 the family had moved in to a home on North Lodge Avenue, Joseph was described as a 'navvy' .. an abbreviation for navigator, essentially a labourer working on canals, railways or roadways.
Edwards sister Rose, although still only 14 years of age, was in service as a domestic servant, a fate common to many girls of poorer families.

Within a few years, Edwards mother Elizabeth became a cleaner at the Kursaal (later renamed The Royal Hall) and various other members of Edwards extended family began living close by. Two of his mother's sisters, Annie and Isabella, had both moved into New Park by the early 1900's. Annie remained a spinster all her life, but Isabella was now living in Baldwin Street with her new husband Thomas Bartley Mulrooney (they married in 1905) and Agnes, who was Edward's cousin, Isabella's daughter born out of wedlock in the Knaresborough Workhouse in 1896. Edward's Uncle James Cundell was also in the New Park district, but Sarah, Edward's Aunt who had previously lived with his family, had moved back to work as a domestic servant on a farm in Beckwithshaw, the area of Harrogate where she was born.

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