Ethel Nelson was born in Van Buren City, Iowa, on November 1, 1869, the third of seven children born to John Wilson Nelson and Eliza Boner Nelson. She grew up in Birmingham, Iowa, where she graduated from high school and took part in debates through her school’s literary society. On January 20, 1892, Nelson married Orange Smith Calhoun who worked as a livestock wholesaler, trading in cattle, sheep and hogs, with his brother C.N. Calhoun. Orange Calhoun died December 14, 1931. Ethel Nelson Calhoun had four sons: Claude N. (1893), Van (1901), John N. (1903), and Herbert Calhoun (1906). John N. Calhoun later served as a Republican senator in the Iowa state legislature from 1933 to 1937. Calhoun had eleven grandchildren and twenty great-grandchildren.

In her later life, Calhoun would grow a large vegetable garden to sustain herself, as well as rent out rooms to participants in a religious revival held across the road from her house. Calhoun would spend the winters with her sons, and she also traveled to San Diego to visit her sisters.

Ethel Nelson Calhoun was a poet, using the pen name “Nevada.” Her work was published multiple times in various newspapers, and her diaries contain many more personal writings and poetry. Calhoun taught Sunday School for seven years, was a member of the Women's Christian Temperance Union, was president of the Foreign Missionary Society, and volunteered at the Farm Bureau. Ethel “Nevada” Nelson Calhoun died on January 13, 1965, in Burlington, Iowa.