Founded in September 1877, Nicodemus already consisted of about 300 Black settlers in the area when Williana arrived with her husband, Daniel, the following spring. As did their white counterparts, these Africa-American settlers lived in very primitive conditions. This wasn't the little town of nice homes, public buildings and lush vegetation they were assured awaited their arrival. Instead, they found people living in dugouts "like prairie dogs" among the grasses of the plains, with the only relief a thin meandering oasis of the tree lined Solomon River. Having come from the forested hills and cultivated lands of northeastern Kentucky, certainly others in Wiliana's group were equally shaken by this unfamiliar and apparent desolate scene. Many, about 100, returned to Kentucky or went on. Williana, Daniel and others chose to stay.

This was an era of reckless land promotion. Railroads, needing to populate the West to create markets for their services, exaggerated the qualities of the soils and climate in this "Western Eden".

Town and land promoters scoured the Nation to recruit settlers. These promoters also presented wildly optimistic visions of the future for the settlers of western lands. It was two such men who formed the Nicodemus Town Company. Reverend W.H. Smith, a Black minister, was president and W.R. Hill, a white man and professional land developer, served as treasurer. As church activities were almost the only large gatherings allowed Southern Blacks, Hill visited Africian-American congregations in Kentucky to pitch Nicodemus. It was he who enticed the Hickmans and others to form colony organizations to settle Nicodemus.

Associating Kansas with the Underground Railroad and the fiery abolitionist John Brown, African-Americans were particularly responsive to opportunities to settle there. They recollected that, after much cross border bloodshed between abolitionist Kansas and pro-slavery Missouri, Kansas entered the Union as a free state. Handbills and flyers distributed by the Nicodemus Town Company portrayed Nicodemus as a place for African-Americans to establish Black self-government.

The people of Nicodemus needed only one more ingredient to ensure its continued growth and survival - a railroad. They had seen other towns bypassed by railroads wither and die. Despite tireless efforts of town boosters, the closest a railroad ever came was just south of the Solomon River; Nicodemus lay to the north. When businesses fled to the other side of the river to a Union Pacific Railroad camp that later became the town of bogue, Nicodemus began a long gradual decline.