Though Raymond Nias was born in
England (25 September 1832 in Bridgewater, Somerset), he likely had no
recollection of it, having immigrated to America when he was four years old. However, he appeared to have been proud of
his heritage as it was well-known later in life that he was an Englishman by
birth. He also probably had no
recollection of his father as he was gone by the time Raymond was five. Raymond grew up in Providence living at a
school and with a well-educated teacher mother.
He certainly became well-educated himself.
By August 1850, 18 year old Raymond Nias was associated with the Mexican Boundary Commission. He was an assistant to the Engineers and Surveyors in the field (Weekly National Intelligence. Washington DC, 10 August 1850). His home was noted as Rhode Island. The full commission boarded the steamboat Galveston in New York and departed in August 1850. Their destination was Fort Lavaca, Texas. Horses and mules were waiting their arrival. Once their, the commission boarded a small steamboat and traveled up the Guadeloupe River to Victoria, Texas. From their, they worked to fix the vast US-Mexico boundary and later returned with valuable information about a mostly unknown region.
Between 1852 and 1854, Raymond
was married to Lyra Gilman. Lyra was born in Massachusetts and the
association between Nias and Gilman that brought them together is unknown. Lyra Gilman was the daughter of John and
Nancy Gilman, who ran a large hotel in Baltimore, Maryland in 1850 and later
moved to Illinois to become farmers. Raymond
and Lyra Nias were in Kentucky by 1855 where their first child was born (census
records note her birth location as Kentucky).
Raymond influenced the name of their daughter, she was named Georgiana
Nias. Two years later, the young
Nias family was in St. Charles, Kane County, Illinois where Lizzie (circa 1857)
and Tyram (1859, wonder if the name may have been Tyrell since the Raymond’s
mother married Judge Tyrrell in 1857) were born. In
1860, Raymond considered himself an artist, though the type of artist is
unknown.
Between 1860 and 1865 while in
Illinois, Raymond and Lyra separated.
Raymond Nias moved to Sparta, Wisconsin by 1866. The next year he married 23 year old Mary
Smith on 5 June 1867 in Monroe County, Wisconsin. Raymond and Mary Nias made their home in
Sparta, Monroe County, Wisconsin and in 1870 and Raymond was working as a
photographer. His children remained in
Illinois with their mother who married Alexander H. Merritt. They were living in Chicago, Cook County,
Illinois in 1870 where Alexander was a boot and shoe salesman. Georgiana and Lizzie were in school and their
young brother seems to have passed away at some point in the 1860s.
Ray Nias was found in the August 1863 Chicago Tribune and in many other editions to 1865
Ray Nias was found in the July 1864 Chicago Tribune
Raymond Nias was definitely one
of the early photographers in the mid-west.
Nias was known to be operating a photographic parlor as early as 1862
and probably earlier. His parlor was
known as “Ray Nias Photographer” and advertised in the Chicago Tribune and as
far away as Bloomington. He left Chicago
in 1865 and set up shop in Sparta by 1866.
Future photographers, such as James Birney Sabin, learned to be photographers
as apprentices under Nias.
A photographer with his camera
circa 1865
Raymond Nias and his children
must have stayed connected. Between 1880
and 1881, his daughter Georgiana Nias was sent to England to visit her
grandmother Georgiana who was a widow living out of the estate of her late
husband Thomas Ensor in St. Leonard, Devon, England. The trip became more than a simple visit and
two years later, she married widower Quentin Addison McConnell in Exeter,
Devonshire, England. Daughter Lizzie Nias
was single in the 1880s and still living in Chicago, Illinois. She also made a trip to Europe, presumably to
visit her sister and grandmother, and returned to Illinois in October 1887. She would later find out her grandmother
Georgiana Duins Nias Tyrrell Ensor had passed away shortly after departing
England.
Maude Raymond Nias
From census records, Raymond and
Mary Nias must have had a daughter named Maude Raymond Nias in about 1871. She was living with her grandfather James W. Smith,
father of Mary Smith Nias, in 1880 Sparta, Wisconsin (and married Robert Foster
West 16 December 1896). Raymond Nias
disappeared from records by 1873 and it can only be assumed that he passed
away.
Everitt’s Art Gallery was located in Chicago, Illinois where Raymond
Nias was an agent in and before 1865
