Mary P. Nichols (b. Plumb) (1835-1931) was born in Trumbull County, Ohio, and died in Denver, Colorado. By 1856 she had moved with her family to Pleasant Ridge, Iowa, and by 1860 to Dutch Creek, Iowa, where she worked as a schoolteacher and married Lafayette W. Nichols, at that time a farmer, in 1860. They remained in Dutch Creek until 1872 when they moved to Denver. There Nichols's husband worked as a lumber merchant and in real estate. In 1885 Nichols began attending Christian Science meetings in the home of Mary Melissa Hall, and in March 1886 she and her husband took a class in Christian Science from Bradford Sherman, a student of Mary Baker Eddy's. Nichols took the Normal course from Eddy in February 1887 and subsequently began working as a practitioner and teacher of Christian Science in Denver. She was involved in the establishment of First Church of Christ, Scientist, Denver, and joined The First Church of Christ, Scientist, in Boston, Massachusetts, on November 7, 1899. Nichols was listed in the directory of The Christian Science Journal from 1900 until her passing, and she became a member of the General Association of Teachers in 1904. Nichols was active in the suffrage movement, serving as treasurer of the Colorado Equal Suffrage Association, and was also a clay modeler, exhibiting one of her pieces at the Chicago World's Fair in 1893.

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