Nellie Stokes was born in Springwells in Northwest Michigan to British immigrants James W. Stokes and Clara A. Minard. She had one older brother, Charles James Stokes (11/18/1878). Her father, James, worked as a painter in Springwells. Clara died in 1886 around the time Nellie was age five, the result of a difficult childbirth with a younger brother, Clarence (1886), who also did not survive. It is not clear who helped to raise her, but she did get some musical education through her teens. The first independent listing for Nellie was in the 1898 Detroit city directory, which showed her to be a music teacher at 17. She appeared in at least three subsequent directories in the same capacity or as a musician.

The Stokes family had moved to Detroit with James, still working as a painter, and who had remarried to Nellie's stepmother Florence Hanna, on July 24, 1894. As of 1900, her brother Charles had moved to Cheboygan where he was listed as a landlord. Nellie was shown in the census as still living with her father, although city directories indicate that she was living in various boarding houses during the period and working as a music teacher.

Starting around 1902 Ms. Stokes went to work for Pardridge and Blackwell, a prominent dry good store and banking firm founded in 1894 in Detroit. Her role was likely as a sheet music demonstrator in their frequently advertised music department, eventually representing the Whitney Warner publishing firm that would soon be purchased by Jerome H. Remick. Given the known history of many other women composers, she probably got the composing bug while working in the store, and in 1903 her first piece appeared, Checkers, sort of a raggy march, published by Whitney Warner.

In 1904 Nellie moved back in with her father and stepmother. The next pieces to appear came in 1906, including Snow Ball and Hey Rube, two fine rag tunes under the Remick imprint. A point of curiosity is why her name appeared as Nellie W. Stokes on the cover of these pieces, yet as Nellie M. Stokes inside. It was possibly an error by the plate renderer or cover artist, but the initial showed as W in copyright records. Her death record for Woodmere Cemetery also shows W as opposed to M, but her marriage record shows an M, not W, so they may have been interchangeable in some way.

On March 28, 1907 Nellie married Edward T. Hawley and moved in with him for a while. Edward was listed as a travel agent, then later as a salesman for a novelty store. It is uncertain if he was related to the Hawley Brothers, Edward, Luke and James, who had started a saloon in Detroit in 1900 that ended up being the scene of the crime where the older brother Edward was killed by James in 1902. However, Nellie's husband Edward's father Louis may have also been one of their brothers.

In 1908 the only piece published under Nellie's married name of Hawley, In Love's Net: Waltzes, dedicated to her new husband, was published by Remick. Nellie W. Stokes was the name used on the cover of the piece. It was also in 1908 that Nellie became a manager for Remick in Detroit. There were two more pieces published in 1909, including the great rag Razzle Dazzle. She and Edward were divorced on July 29, 1909. She was still working for Remick in 1910, albeit using her maiden name of Stokes in the city directory.

Nellie was then married to Herman William Horstmeyer of Fort Wayne, Indiana, on February 27, 1910, in Detroit. They appear to have taken a honeymoon trip long enough to keep them out of the 1910 enumeration. The couple returned to nearby Huntington, Indiana, where they resided through 1914. Charles Richard was born on October 22, 1912. On May 31, 1914, Nellie gave birth to their second child, Elizabeth, and then repeating the unfortunate fate of her mother, died of an embolism on June 3. After the funeral in Fort Wayne she was returned to Detroit and buried alongside her father, mother, and in 1916 her stepmother, in Woodmere Cemetery.