Early and personal life Asenath Hatch was born in
Chelsea, Vermont, on February 24, 1792, the daughter of the early settlers Michael (–1830) and Martha Hatch (1745–1837). Her family were
Congregationalists, and she was named after the biblical
Asenath, the daughter of
Potipherah and wife of
Joseph. She trained as a teacher and worked successfully in her hometown before marrying Norman Nicholson around 1825. He was a widower with three children, and the couple relocated to New York. She stated that "good bread, pure water, ripe fruit, and vegetables are my meat and drink exclusively." The book included some recipes with dairy ingredients, but Nicholson advocated against their use. In the 1840s, the couple operated a boarding house that served meals in accordance with Graham's dietary principles. Nicholson also promoted physical exercise and occasional fasting.
Kitchen Philosophy for Vegetarians Nicholson authored the cookbook
Kitchen Philosophy for Vegetarians, published by
William Horsell in 1849. A review in
The Vegetarian Advocate, noted that "butter and eggs are excluded" from the recipes.
Ireland Nicholson was widowed in 1841. After returning to the United States, she published, she wrote ''Ireland's Welcome to the Stranger; An Excursion through Ireland in 1844 and 1845'', which was published in 1847. Now appeared a fairy castle, a house with variegated pillars and open door, made of shells of the most delicate shades, arranged in stars and circles of beautiful workmanship. These showed exquisite taste in the designer, and must have been done with great cost and care. I found that a laboring peasant was the architect of this wonderful fabric, but he was kept most religiously in his rank, laboring for eight pence a day. In
Roundstone, Nicholson recorded a conversation in which a local man expressed strong resentment toward the potato, describing it as "the greatest curse that ever was sent on Ireland", and attributing its introduction to
Walter Raleigh.The blackguard of a Raleigh who brought 'em here, entailed a curse upon the laborer that has broken his heart. Because the landholder sees we can live and work hard on 'em, he grinds us down in our wages, and then despises us because we are ignorant and ragged.Nicholson reflected that this was "a pithy truth, one which I had never seen in so vivid a light as now." Nicholson returned to Ireland in 1846, during the second of five consecutive years of potato crop failures, which, along with widespread unemployment, were creating a national crisis. Concerned that she would only be a witness to the suffering, she wrote to the
New-York Tribune and
The Emancipator, appealing for assistance. As a result, support was mobilized from their readers. In July of that year, five barrels of corn arrived from New York. The same ship also carried 50 barrels intended for the Central Relief Committee, but Nicholson chose to act independently.
Later life and death Nicholson left Ireland in the fall of 1848, feeling her mission there was complete. She then traveled to England, where she wrote
Lights and Shades of Ireland, with the section on the famine being published in the United States in 1851 as
Annals of the Famine. She also joined the pacifist
Elihu Burritt’s delegation to the
International Peace Congress in Frankfurt and toured Europe. After spending the winter of 1851–52 in Bristol, she returned to the United States in 1852. Her last book,
Loose Papers (1853), details her European travels. Nicholson lived the remainder of her life in relative obscurity, dying from
typhoid fever in
Jersey City, New Jersey, on May 15, 1855. She was interred at
Green-Wood Cemetery in
Brooklyn, New York. ==Selected publications==