A Tarnished Saber: General Azor Nickerson’s Four Marriages

On the Run from Pinkerton's National Detective Agency

Noted Civil War veteran General Azor Nickerson was married four times— once to two separate woman consecutively, and then to the same woman twice. At one point, he was married to two of them at the same time. The result was one of the most sensational divorce cases that ever occurred in army circles.

General Azor Nickerson. Original source unknown.

Azor Nickerson was born in 1837 in Litchfield, Medina, Ohio, and was studying law when the Civil War broke out. He volunteered with the Eighth Ohio infantry regiment and was appointed a second lieutenant. He then was promoted to captain, leading his company in the Battles of Antietam and Gettysburg and was wounded in both battles.

After the Battle of Gettysburg, Nickerson was nursed back to health by a Quaker family that lived near the battlefield. He later returned to Gettysburg and was on the platform when Lincoln gave his Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863.

Nickerson married his first wife, Ella Nora Riegal, the daughter of the family that had cared for him in Gettysburg. After the war, Ella went with him to the western frontier where Nickerson was serving as aide-de-camp to Brigadier General George Crook. Ella died a few months after their marriage.

Captain J. C. Bourke, Adjunct General (left), Azor Nickerson, Assistant Adjunct General and aide-de-camp to General George Crook (center), and General George Crook (right), c.1880. Sharlot Hall Museum.

Nickerson then married his second wife, Emma Cecilia Derby, in San Francisco in 1870. President Rutherford B. Hayes, an old friend of Nickerson from Ohio, appointed him, now a major, as Assistant Adjutant General of the army in Washington, D.C. He and Emma moved to Washington and into a rented house in Logan Circle, the vogue neighborhood for retired Civil War military officers at the time.

After arriving in Washington, Nickerson fell in love with Lena Diller Carter, who was his wife’s twenty-four-year-old dressmaker. He then talked his wife Emma into going to Europe with their daughter to obtain medical treatment for herself and to enroll the daughter in school there, suggesting that it would be cheaper than in Washington and that it would save them some money. Emma was somehow convinced and left.

Nickerson wrote to Emma consistently for two years, sending her money and discouraging her from returning home. He also convinced her to sign over her rights to the deeds to lots of land they owned in Portland, Oregon, as well as in Washington, under the pretense of using the proceeds from the sale to purchase a house for them in DC.

With their property sold, in 1883 Nickerson bought a row house at 7 Dupont Circle and moved all of Emma’s belongings into it.

Row houses on Dupont Circle in the 1880s. Nickerson’s house was two doors to the the right of the house in the center. Library of Congress.

Next, Nickerson filed for and was granted a divorce from Emma in Pennsylvania on the grounds of abandonment, claiming that she refused to return from Europe. He also insisted that Lena marry him immediately, before her family could find out and whose disapproval of her marrying a divorcé might deter the marriage. This she did.

At this point, Nickerson had stopped writing to Emma altogether, and she started to get concerned. One day, she received an urgent telegram from her mother informing her about the divorce and urging her to return to Washington at once. When Nickerson learned that his wife was returning home, he had the title to the Dupont Circle house transferred into Lena’s name to protect it from Emma’s claims on his own property.

Upon her return to the U.S., Emma filed to annul the divorce in a Philadelphia court, and the details of Nickerson’s philandering were openly aired, tarnishing what was otherwise a bright military record. A warrant was issued for the immediate arrest of Nickerson in preparation for his court-martial for obtaining a fraudulent divorce and conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.

With the annulment in hand, Emma filed for divorce, alleging adultery. At this point, everyone suddenly realized that Nickerson was missing. Robert Todd Lincoln, then Secretary of War, hired the Pinkerton National Detective Agency to track Nickerson down.

The logo of the Pinkerton National Detective Agency in use at the time they were hired by Robert Todd Lincoln to locate Nickerson.

The Pinkerton agency put Nickerson’s Dupont Circle house under constant surveillance, and Lena’s comings and goings were watched closely. All mail sent to the house was intercepted and read. Nickerson was finally tracked down in a small mill town in Ontario, Canada, and Robert Todd Lincoln signed a warrant for his arrest, assuming that Nickerson could easily be lured back over the border. This proved not to be the case.

Divorce proceedings dragged on, eventually reaching the Supreme Court, and in 1887 Emma Nickerson was finally granted a divorce on the grounds of adultery and cruelty. The next year, Nickerson once again (and legally this time) married Lena Carter in Niagara Falls. The couple remained in Canada until the end of 1890, when they returned to Washington and took up residence with Lena’s mother.

For the remainder of his days, Nickerson fought to have his name restored to the rolls of retired army officers. That finally occurred the week of his death in 1910, when Congress passed a bill restoring his commission. When he died, he was the last surviving person who had sat on the platform when President Lincoln delivered the Gettysburg Address. He is buried in Arlington National Cemetery along with Lena, both his third and fourth wife.

Azor Nickerson’s grave in Arlington National Cemetery. He is buried with Lena.