John Granville Nicholson junior, agent and bird collector, was a son of John Granville Nicholson senior (1823-1876) and his wife Ellen, born Shaw. In April 1886 in Peddie he married Edith Maud Boon (1868-1921), with whom he had seven children, including a son also named John Granville Nicholson, the third (1887-1946). Nicholson senior resided at Hondeklip Bay on the west coast during the eighteen-fifties and sixties and his wife died there in 1871. Nicholson junior was an "enrolled agent" at Peddie in the Eastern Cape during the eighteen-eighties, but also active at Komga. He served as secretary of the Peddie Agricultural Society around 1885-1886, during the presidency of the insect collector W.R. Piers*.
In 1887 Nicholson junior presented a valuable collection of 81 bird skins to the Albany Museum, Grahamstown. He had collected most of these in the Peddie district. The collection included 14 cuckoos (some from Knysna), 14 sunbirds, 9 finches, 8 shrikes, 6 orioles, and 6 kingfishers.
