Nye Severns was the 10th of 11 children of John Severns. Family tradition says in about 1809, Nye's parents died when an epidemic of Black Plague or Asiatic Cholera swept the country, leaving their younger children orphaned.

Nye was bonded out to a farmer, who treated the young boy like he was a slave. When he was 11-1/2, Nye was hoeing in a field of potatoes some distance from the house when a group of soldiers marched by on their way to the War of 1812. Seeing a golden opportunity to escape his servitude, Nye dropped his hoe and ran off with them. At dinner time the men fed him, listened to his story, and took him to their Colonel. The Colonel told Nye he might stay as his servant, get his food and clothes 'til he was 12, and then enlist. When Nye turned 12, he enlisted in the military as a musician, and became a fifer. Family tradition claims Nye was the youngest recruit in the United States Army during the War of 1812 to draw a soldier's pay. When the war ended and they were discharged, the Colonel became Nye's foster father and took the youth home with him to central New York and taught him the shoemaker trade.

Nye married about 1822 in New York to Magdelene Quick; they had 11 children: Julia Ann (my great-great-grandmother), James Quick, John, Harriet, Columbus Delano, Erwin, Elbert, Blair, Bruce, Louisa Jane, and George Warren Severns. Five of the boys served in the Civil War; only four returned home. Elbert died in a military hospital in LaGrange, Tennessee, of smallpox at age 25.

The Nye Severns family moved in 1826 from Ovid, Seneca County, New York, to Cuyahoga County, Ohio, in 1835 to Wilkins Grove, Will County, Illinois, and in 1839 to Rock Island County, Illinois, along the Mississippi River.

Nye Severns died at age 75 on Sunday, December 2, 1877. There must have been some question about his death, since an inquest was held the same day. Twelve neighbors were paid one dollar each for serving as the jurymen; and Justice of the Peace L.V. Reed was paid ten dollars for presiding at the inquest. Unfortunately, the results of the inquest could not be found in a 1973 search of courthouse records, where it had been filed originally in Rock Island, Illinois.

In Nye's photo, notice his untanned forehead: a typical farmer's tan, where his wide-brimmed hat would shield his forehead from the sun.