Nancy Sage Pier Hiler was born in a log cabin in Saratoga County, high in the Adirondack Mountains, on February 20, 1832. She was the daughter of Beliah William Sage (a captain in the War of 1812 and a school teacher) and Sally (aka Sarah) Ann Jones. Nancy was one of 16 children. The family moved to a farm in Parma around 1850.

Around 1859, she married James Pier and they purchased a farm on Clarkson Parma Townline Road, near Knapp’s Corners, where she would live for 69 years. They had four children – Carrie Pier Hendershot, Daniel Pier, Augusta Pier and Flora Pier Collins. James Pier passed away at the young age of 42, in 1873. Nancy later married Thomas Hiler, a Civil War Veteran, who died in 1895.

In her elder years, Nancy would tell stories about seeing Native Americans living in wigwams in Saratoga, having to card and spin her own wool to make clothing, grinding wheat and corn into meal by crushing it between two stones, and cultivating their farmland with wooden plows drawn by oxen. She recalled a time as a child when a bear stole her pink calico apron off the clothesline. She witnessed the election of Abraham Lincoln and had vivid memories of the Civil War and its aftermath. She would comment that the greatest improvement of her lifetime was the system of hard roads, after telling of the times the mud was hub-deep on the farm wagons and buggies driven before the 20th century.

Around 1929, Nancy moved in with her daughter Flora Collins, who was keeping house and living at the home of Fred Curtis on Curtis Road. She lived the age of 100 and passed away on December 22, 1932. The funeral was held at the Curtis Road home, with interment at the Sage Knapp Pioneer Cemetery. At the time of her death, she was the oldest resident of the Town of Parma.