John Barnes Nicholson (1840 – 17 February 1919) was an English-born Australian politician. He was born at Biglands in Cumbria to farmer John Nicholson and Mary Lightfoot. He worked as a coalminer from a young age, travelling widely to Vancouver and California before settling in New South Wales in 1882. He mined at Newcastle and then at Bulli, and was a local secretary of the Miners' Union. In February 1891 he married Ellen Brodie in Sydney; they had four children.