This is to answer question (2): what are the standard proofs before 1961?
According to Barry Simon (Harmonic Analysis [volume 3 of his "Comprehensive course"], p197) the standard citations for "Liouville" theorem pre 1961 are this paper of Maxime Bôcher from 1903 and this paper of Emile Picard from 1924.
Bôcher did not actually give a full proof of this fact. He proved the following theorem:
If $u$ is a harmonic function on $\mathbb{R}^n \setminus K$ where $K$ is a compact set, and $u$ is bounded, then $u$ has a unique well-defined limit at infinity.
This was proven by taking first the Kelvin transform (which Lord Kelvin proved in 1847 [Extraits de deux Lettres adressées à M. Liouville; this is published in Liouville Journal, a.k.a. J. Math. Pure. Appl]) which makes the problem one of an isolated singularity, and by Bôcher's removable singularity theorem which he proved in the pages before, this means that function extends continuously to the origin/infinity.
Bôcher then asserted Liouville's theorem with a one sided bound as an immediate corollary but did not give the proof. Since I am not exactly sure what is known about harmonic functions in 1902 in general, I cannot reliably reconstruct the proof that he had in mind.
Picard did in fact give his proof for the following theorem
A positive harmonic function $u$ on $\mathbb{R}^3$ is constant.
His proof proceeds by writing $u(x)$ using the Poisson integral for the disc centered at the origin with radius $R \gg |x|$, using the boundary values on the disc. This allows him to get the bounds $$ c_R u(0) \leq u(x) \leq C_R u(0) $$ with explicit expressions for $c_R$ and $C_R$ that tend to 1 as $R\to\infty$.
(Remark: positivity here is used to ensure that we can compute the expressions for $c_R$ and $C_R$ based on the Poisson kernel formula.)
The difference between Picard's and the "modern" proof is not huge (from the modern perspective). Both are using some sort of "mean value" property of harmonic functions. But Nelson's proof using the simplest version of the mean value property by allowing the domains of integration to differ leads to a proof that can be written down without symbols; I don't think the same can be done easily with Picard's version.