[1] He left the Canterbury church around 1918 without fanfare and retired to New South Wales, where he died at his home in the Sydney suburb of Vaucluse.
At the south end of the Clayton Church is a stained glass window erected to his memory, a copy of the famous Light of the World painting by William Holman Hunt.
His daughter Christine Emma Nicholls married William George Baker, son of the Archdeacon of Brightwater, New Zealand.
John Nicholls, the second son had an illustrious academic career at University of Melbourne and Ormond College,[3][4] was ordained a Presbyterian minister in Victoria, and was a noted temperance activist.
[5] He married his cousin Amy Eleanor Barber, granddaughter of Thomas Napier (1802-1881), in 1905 and served as a padre during WWI.