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fl. 1907
The man: Howard's Walkerton section is built on one informant, and Howard names him with unusual warmth: "Mr. Samuel J. Nicoles, long a leading citizen of the town, as he is indeed a Christian gentleman, whose citizenship would be an honor to any community, gives the following comprehensive statement of present conditions" — and the statement follows: the compact town, the good homes, the two-story brick business blocks, the hotel, the Endly building, the bank, the elevator, the merchants, the lawyers and doctors, the brick schoolhouse, the five churches, the wide streets and cement sidewalks, the town-owned waterworks and electric light plant, and the estimate of fifteen hundred people in 1907. Much of what any later account knows of Walkerton in 1907 is Nicoles' testimony at one remove, and this section prints him as what he was: the town's leading citizen of his generation and the county history's voice for the town. His name is printed as Howard prints it, "Nicoles," in the town section and the volume's front matter alike. His dates, his business, and his offices do not stand in the sources read; the Independent
Sources:
- Howard, Ch. IX §5, pp. 317–318, and the volume's front matter — Nicoles named as informant and as "of Walkerton."