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."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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