William Foster Nye

William Foster Nye (May 20, 1824 – August 12, 1910) was an American businessman and founder of a lubricating oil business in New Bedford, Massachusetts, which is still in existence today and known as Nye Lubricants. He was a relative of science communicator Bill Nye.

Life and career Nye was born in the village of Pocasset (at the time considered part of the town of Sandwich), one of the eight children of Syrena née Dimmock and Ebenezer Nye. His family was descended from Benjamin Nye who had emigrated from England in 1635 and settled in Massachusetts where he eventually built and operated a sawmill near Sandwich.

At the age of 16 Nye was apprenticed to Prince Weeks, a master builder in New Bedford. On finishing his apprenticeship, he worked for a pipe organ-building company in Boston and then spent three years in Calcutta as a carpenter for the Frederic Tudor Ice Company. On his return to Massachusetts he married Mary Keith on May 20, 1851. Nye then sailed to California, crossing the Isthmus of Panama on foot, and arriving in San Francisco shortly after the Fire of 1851 which had destroyed much of the city. He worked in the re-building of the city for several years, helping to construct some of San Francisco's first brick buildings.

Nye's son, Joseph Keith Nye (1858–1923) It was subsequently acquired by the Mock family in 1956 and still operates today under the name Nye Lubricants.

A keen believer in spiritualism, Nye had been one of the founders and most active promoters of the Onset Bay Grove Association. Their summer retreat, Onset Bay Grove, built by the association in the late 1870s, claimed to be the "largest community of spiritualism yet formed in the fifty years history of its teachings." In his later years Nye said of his beliefs: That I am a spiritualist must be to those I leave behind me the touch that withers my memory or the ever living archway about which they can entwine earth's fragrant flowers and through which they may in gladness follow me to the evergreen shore.

Nye is buried with his wife Mary in Riverside Cemetery in Fairhaven.