FATHER NASH
The saintly life and strange personal charm of the Rev. Daniel Nash, the
first rector of Christ Church, made a deep impression upon the village
of Cooperstown in its early days; and the wide range of his apostolic
labors as a missionary gave him a singular fame, during half a century,
throughout Otsego county, and far beyond its borders. The grave of
Father Nash is in Christ churchyard, marked by the tallest of the
monuments along the driveway, at a spot which he himself had chosen for
his burial.
Daniel Nash was born in Massachusetts at Great Barrington (then called
Housatonic) May 28, 1763.[82] At the age of twenty-two years he was
graduated at Yale in the same class with Noah Webster. He was originally
Presbyterian in his doctrinal belief, and in polity was sympathetic with
the Congregational denomination, of which he was a member. But within
ten years after his graduation from college Daniel Nash became a
communicant of the Episcopal Church and began to study for Holy Orders.
It was one of the quaint sayings attributed to him in later years that
"you may bray a Presbyterian as with a pestle in a mortar, and you
cannot get all of his Presbyterianism out of him," and when asked how he
accounted for his own experience, "I was caught young," he would reply.
Through the influence of the Rev. Dr. Daniel Burhans, who had made
several missionary tours through Otsego and adjoining counties, Nash
became fired with zeal for missionary work in this romantic and
adventurous field. In 1797, having taken deacon's orders, he was
accompanied to Otsego by his bride of a little more than a year, who was
Olive Lusk, described as "an amiable lady of benignant mind and placid
manners," the daughter of an intimate friend of his father. They made
their first home at Exeter, in Otsego, and the early ministerial acts of
Daniel Nash were divided between Exeter and Morris, about eighteen miles
distant.[83]
The missionary zeal of Daniel Nash was so intense that he was unable to
comprehend lukewarmness in such a cause. The first bishop of the diocese
of New York, the Rt. Rev. Samuel Provoost, belonged to a type of
ecclesiastical life that was characteristic of the century then closing.
Orthodox, scholarly, not ungenuinely religious, a gentleman of lofty
aims and distinguished manners, Bishop Provoost charmingly entertained
at his New York residence the rugged missionary of Otsego who came to
report to him, but he was quite unable to enter into a missionary
enthusiasm that appeared to him fanatical, or to understand the
character of an educated man who lived by choice among the people of
rude settlements and untamed forests. Nash was so indignant at the
attitude of his chief that he resolved not to receive from his hands the
ordination to the priesthood, and it was not until the autumn of 1801,
shortly after the consecration of the Rev. Dr. Benjamin Moore as
coadjutor bishop of New York, that he became a priest.
As the result of tireless labor, of much travel through difficult
regions, by the maintenance of divine services at many outposts, Father
Nash was able little by little to establish self-supporting church
organizations throughout Otsego and the neighboring region. In 1801 Zion
Church was built at Morris. Eight years later Father Nash organized St.
Matthew's parish at Unadilla, and in 1811 completed the formal
organization of Christ Church parish in Cooperstown, where the church
building had been erected in 1807-10, and where Father Nash now came to
be in partial residence as rector during seven years.[84]
Aside from these parishes which so soon became permanently established
this extraordinary man was regularly or occasionally visiting and
shepherding the people of many other settlements. In Otsego county,
besides giving pastoral attention to Exeter, Morris, Unadilla, and
Cooperstown, he held services and preached--to name them in the order
of his first visits--in Richfield, Springfield, and Cherry Valley;
Westford and Milford; Edmeston, Burlington, and Hartwick; Fly Creek and
Burlington Flats; Laurens, LeRoy (now Schuyler's Lake), Hartwick Hill,
and Worcester; New Lisbon and Richfield Springs. In Chenango county,
after the establishment of the church in New Berlin, he officiated at
Sherburne and Mount Upton. Beyond these points he extended his work to
Windsor and Colesville in Broome county; to Franklin and Stamford in
Delaware county; to Canajoharie and Warren in Montgomery county; to
Lebanon in Madison county; to Paris, Verona, Oneida Castle, Oneida, and
New Hartford, in Oneida county; to Cape Vincent on Lake Ontario in
Jefferson county; and to Ogdensburg in St. Lawrence county, one hundred
and fifty miles to the north of the missionary's Otsego home.[85] Such
was the field of the priest who officially reported each year to the
convention of the diocese of New York as "Rector of the churches in
Otsego county."
Here belongs the story of an unusual coincidence. From 1816 to 1831
there lived, in the same general region of New York State, within one
hundred miles of the apostle of Otsego, another well known Christian
minister whose surname was Nash, whose only Christian name was
Daniel--the Rev. Daniel Nash,--always known, by a title which popular
affection had bestowed on him, as "Father" Nash. To the people of Otsego
and Chenango counties the name of Father Nash was a household word,
while to the residents of Lewis and Jefferson counties the same name
signified quite a different person. It is curious that no chronicle of
either region betrays any contemporary knowledge of the coincidence.
Each prophet was honored in his own country, and unknown in the
stronghold of the other. This is the more strange, since their paths
almost crossed in the year 1817, when the two men of identical name,
title, and profession were within forty-five miles of each other, one
being resident as pastor of the Stow's Square church, three miles north
of Lowville in Lewis county, while the Otsego missionary was holding
services at Verona in Oneida county. At different times they traversed
the same counties: it was in 1816 that the Otsego missionary made tours
in Jefferson and St. Lawrence counties; the other Father Nash is known
to have visited these counties eight years later.[86]
The series of coincidences is made more singular by the fact that each
Father Nash had married a wife whose first name was Olive, so that not
only were both men called Father Nash, but the wife, after the custom of
that day, in each case was addressed as Mrs. Olive Nash.
Aside from these remarkable identities the two men were quite
dissimilar. Both were natives of Massachusetts, but the Otsego Nash came
from the extreme west of that State, the other from the farthest east.
Both originally belonged to the Congregational denomination, but the
Otsego Nash had become a priest of the Episcopal Church, while the other
was a Presbyterian minister. The Presbyterian Nash was a famous
revivalist. The Otsego missionary detested revivals. He said that the
converts "reminded him of little humble-bees, which are rather larger
when hatched than they are sometimes afterwards."
There is something almost mysterious in the figure of this second Father
Nash rising from the mist of bygone years, and one is quite prepared to
read of him[87] that he went forth to labor for souls with a double
black veil before his face, like the minister in Hawthorne's weird tale
whose congregation was terrified by the "double fold of crape, hanging
down from his forehead to his mouth, and slightly stirring with his
breath." Three miles north of Lowville in Lewis county, in Stow's Square
churchyard, a marble shaft eight feet high, conspicuous from almost any
point in the country which stretches away to the Adirondack wilderness,
commemorates, in connection with the church that he erected there, the
Father Nash who labored in Lewis and Jefferson counties, and in an
obscure cemetery, not far distant, a modest headstone marks his grave.
Returning to the story of Cooperstown's Father Nash, no estimate of his
work can fail to take into account the character of the field in which
he labored. When he came to this region the country, while partially
settled, was mostly a wilderness. The difficulties of travel were great.
The manner of life among pioneers was crude. Bishop Philander Chase
visited Otsego county in 1799, and gives a vivid impression of the more
than apostolic simplicity of Father Nash's surroundings.[88] The Bishop
found the missionary living in a cabin of unhewn logs, into which he had
recently moved, and from which he was about to remove to another,
equally poor, inhabiting with his family a single room, which contained
all his worldly goods, and driving nails into the walls to make his
wardrobe. The bishop assisted the missionary in his moving, and
describes how they walked the road together, carrying a basket of
crockery between them, and "talked of the things pertaining to the
Kingdom of God."
In his missionary journeys Father Nash rode on horseback from place to
place, often carrying one of his children, and Mrs. Nash with another in
her arms behind him on the horse's back, for she was greatly useful in
the music and responses of the services.
Father Nash held services punctually according to previous appointment,
but they were sometimes strangely interrupted. The terror of wolves had
not been banished from Otsego, and on one occasion, at Richfield, the
entire congregation disappeared in pursuit of a huge bear that had
suddenly alarmed the neighborhood.[89] The bear was captured, and
furnished a supper of which the congregation partook in the evening.
While the bear hunt had spoiled his sermon, Father Nash cheerfully
asserted that it was a Christian deed to destroy so dangerous a brute
even on a Sunday, and a venial offense against the canons of the Church.
It is further related that Father Nash ate so much bear steak, on this
occasion, as to make him quite ill.
Although Fenimore Cooper was usually loath to admit that any character
in his novels was drawn from life, Father Nash was generally recognized
as the original of the Rev. Mr. Grant in the novel descriptive of
Cooperstown which appeared under the title of _The Pioneers_. If this
identification be justified, it must be said that while the author of
the _Leather-Stocking Tales_ has well represented the genuine piety of
his model, he has disguised him as a rather anaemic and depressing
person. Father Nash was a man of rugged health, six feet in height, full
in figure, over two hundred pounds in weight, of fresh and fair
complexion, wearing a wig of longish hair parted in the middle, and
dressed always, as circumstances permitted, with a strict regard for
neatness.
[Illustration: FATHER NASH]
The only original portrait of Father Nash now remaining, from which all
the extant engravings were taken, hangs in the sacristy of Christ
Church. This portrait was given to the church in 1910, when the parish
centennial was celebrated, by Father Nash's granddaughter, Mrs. Anna
Marie Holland, of Saginaw, Michigan, and his great grandson, Harry C.
Nash, of Buffalo. Mrs. Holland related a quaint incident concerning the
portrait as connected with her own childhood. As it hung in her father's
house, she used to be both annoyed and terrified at the manner in which
the eyes of the portrait followed her about the room with persistent
and, as she thought, reproving gaze. Especially when she had been guilty
of some childish prank, the silent reproach in her grandfather's eyes
was intolerable. One day she climbed upon a chair before the portrait,
and with a pin attempted to blind the eyes. The pin pricks are still
visible upon the canvas.
At three score years and ten Father Nash looked upon the bright side of
everything, being full of anecdote and humor, and appeared to have more
of the simplicity and vivacity of youth than men who were thirty years
his junior. One who saw him at this period of life attributed the old
missionary's health and vigor in part to his great cheerfulness.[90]
The slightest sketch of Father Nash would be incomplete without some
reference to the story of his answer to a farmer who asked him what he
fed his lambs. "Catechism," replied Father Nash, "catechism!" And behind
the smile that followed this homely sally the analyst of character would
have seen the earnest purpose of his mission to the children of Otsego
which was one of the sublime secrets of his ministry.
In the history of Western New York Father Nash of Otsego deserves a
place of honor among the foremost pioneers. Wherever the most
adventurous men were found pushing westward the frontier of
civilization, there was Father Nash, uplifting the standard of the
Church. Not only had he courage and energy; he displayed remarkable
foresight in his manner of laying foundations. Of the Episcopal churches
in the Otsego region the greater number were established by him, and
most of them flourish at the present time.
"No Otsego pioneer deserves honor more," says Halsey, in _The Old New
York Frontier_, "not the road builder or leveler of forests, not the men
who fought against Brant and the Tories. To none of these, in so large a
degree, can we apply with such full measure of truth the sayings that no
man liveth himself, and that his works do follow him."
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 82: _Lives of Phelps and Nash_, John N. Norton.]
[Footnote 83: _History of Zion Church Parish, Morris_, by Katherine M.
Sanderson, p. 6.]
[Footnote 84: _Historic Records of Christ Church, Cooperstown_, G.
Pomeroy Keese.]
[Footnote 85: Reports of Rev. Daniel Nash to New York Convention,
1803-1827.]
[Footnote 86: For The Otsego Nash see Reports of Daniel Nash to New York
Conventions. For the other see _Memoirs of Rev. Charles G. Finney_, New
York, A. S. Barnes and Co., 1876, pp. 52, 70, 117.]
[Footnote 87: Finney, _Memoirs_, p. 70.]
[Footnote 88: _Bishop Chase's Reminiscences_, Vol. I, p. 33.]
[Footnote 89: _Reminiscences_, Levi Beardsley, p. 42.]
[Footnote 90: _The Church Review_, New Haven, October, 1848, p. 398.]