ion 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 long