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.