[1] The town was located on the west bank of Sallisaw Creek, thirteen miles (21 km) from its mouth.
The town was named after General John Nicks, a hero of the War of 1812, and mostly consisted of log buildings.
[3] The Osage and the Cherokee ceded most of the territory that would become Lovely County to the federal government in a forced exchange associated with the Indian Removal Act and relocation of these and other tribes to west of the Mississippi Rive.
He had managed the transaction as part of a treaty which sought to establish a buffer zone between the warring Osage and Western Cherokee.
According to an act of congress dated May 24, 1828, all white families displaced in Lovely County were given two quarter sections of land elsewhere.