Nicholson, Asenath (1792–1855)

US teacher, reformer, writer, and traveller. Born in Chelsea, Western Vermont, USA, Nicholson spent her life as a teacher advocating reform through temperance, vegetarianism, and abolitionism. She was brought up in the Congregational Church, a branch of US Protestantism that emphasized the Bible and individual freedom. In 1944 she travelled to Ireland to distribute Bibles in both English and Irish. She worked in soup kitchens and handed out clothing during the famine. The Protestant colonies at Achill and Ventry attracted her interest, however the published account of her travels, Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger, criticized the activities of vigorous evangelicals. Nicholson left Ireland in 1848 and died in relative obscurity from typhoid fever in New Jersey in 1855. Her recently rediscovered Annals of the Famine in Ireland (1850–51) provides an contemporary account of the Irish subsistence crisis.