Inducted in 2017
Prep Prefect/Dean of Students & Teacher (1846-1847; 1852-1856)
Chaplain, US Army
Educator, Administrator & Chaplain, Various Jesuit Institutions

The life and times of Fr. Michael Nash, SJ read like a 19th-century American epic. From the bustling Port of New York to the rolling hills of the Bluegrass State, and from the Native Americans he romanticized and admired to the wounded soldiers he served on Civil War battlefields, Michael Nash’s memoirs are the stuff of historical high adventure, beginning — as so many great American stories do — with a long, slow voyage from distant shores.

Michael Nash was born on September 24, 1824 in County Kilkenny, Ireland. His parents, James Nash and Catherine May Nash, were farmers, and in 1830, they began to receive notices from America that some land had been left to them outside of Louisville, Kentucky. Concluding that it would be best to see the land in person before deciding to move the entire family across the Atlantic, James arranged to make the journey with his son Michael, leaving his eldest son, Thomas, to help manage the family farm.   

Upon arrival in Kentucky, James ultimately determined that the land was too far from a market or a railroad for a farm. Young Michael, however, fascinated by the American frontier, begged his father allow him to stay. James agreed and Michael would be placed in the care of Fr. James Quinn in Louisville, his education completed at St. Louis Church and St. Joseph’s College in Bardstown, Kentucky.

In the historic year of 1841, as Bishop Hughes was busy founding his school back in the Bronx, a teenaged Michael Nash was in Kentucky deciding on a course for his future — whether he should continue at St. Joseph’s towards an undergraduate degree, or if he should apprentice himself to a local coppersmith who was a longtime friend of the Nash family. He consulted with his guardian, Fr. Quinn, who had just recently had a providential meeting with a certain Fr. William Stack Murphy, SJ, from St. Mary’s College near Lebanon, Kentucky. Michael’s future, urged Fr. Quinn, was at St. Mary’s. 

For the next three years, Nash would live and study with the Jesuits at St. Mary’s, in time deciding to enter the Society himself on April 13, 1844. A moody and often quick-tempered young man, Michael Nash faced doubts and misgivings during his time in the novitiate.  With prayer, however, and Fr. Murphy’s encouragement, Nash persisted, and in September 1845, he found himself as a Jesuit novice on the faculty of the St. Ignatius Literary Institution, a newly opened Jesuit school in Louisville. 

On August 9, 1846, a few months after professing his first Jesuit vows, a 21-year-old Nash arrived at Rose Hill with five of his brother Jesuits on the New York and Harlem Railroad. The stern-faced scholastic was immediately made prefect of the Second Division boarding students who were staying on campus for the summer. In other words, Mr. Nash was made the first Jesuit dean of Fordham Prep. “Young fellows from Mexico, Cuba, South America, West India Islands, and from the Southern States, with a few from Brooklyn and New York,” he would note of his first Prep students in his diary. 

It would be the start of a year-long stint at Fordham, functioning as prefect of the Prep boys — both during the day as well as at night in the dorms — as well as the proctor for morning Mass and evening study hall, and moderator of all sports and activities. He also taught English and Latin. In a sentiment that would be echoed by generations of scholastics (and young lay teachers) after him, Mr. Nash would note of his first year at the Prep that “there was barely time to rest.”

After a year in the Bronx, Nash’s next historic undertaking would take him into Manhattan, where, under the direction of Fr. John Larkin, SJ, he was part of a group of Jesuits sent with a few coins in their pockets to found the Church and School of the Holy Name on Walker Street. When their church and school burned to the ground in January 1848, Fr. Larkin was able to obtain a parcel of land between 15th and 16th Street suitable to rebuild. Its doors would open for the first time on November 25, 1850. And so, Michael Nash would have a part in the founding of the school that would come to be known as Xavier High School. 

Mr. Nash returned to Rose Hill in the Summer of 1852 for the philosophate and theologate portions of his formation. He remained at Fordham, resuming his former prefect duties as he made his studies.  Students of the day would later recall Nash’s “iron-like stare” as he watched over them.

In August 1856, he found himself worn out from sickness and diagnosed with tuberculosis by the campus physician. He was sent overseas to consult a lung specialist, the private doctor of Emperor Louis Napoleon, who determined that Nash did not have consumption after all, but was severely overworked and physically exhausted. He was allowed to recover and complete his studies in France and Germany and to prepare for his ordination on the Feast of St. Ignatius, July 31, 1859 in Paderborn, Westphalia.

Fr. Nash, SJ returned to the states in September 1860, and was sent to Frederick, Maryland to continue his convalescence at the novitiate. Within a few months, however, he received word from his superiors that he would be embarking on his next great adventure: The Civil War. As chaplain to the Staten Island-based Sixth Infantry Regiment, “Wilson’s Zouaves,” Fr. Nash would be stationed near the Gulf of Mexico. In addition to the Confederate enemy, he would face oppressive heat, tropical rains, snakes, alligators, disease, and anti-Catholic sentiment even from fellow Union troops. Nonetheless, his time at war was also marked by extraordinary moments of fortitude, grace and compassion as he brought consolation to the fearful, tended to sick the wounded on both sides, and comforted the dying of all denominations.

Bidding farewell to the “boys” of his regiment on June 25, 1863, Fr. Nash would spend a number of years working at various Society schools and missions in New York and Canada. After a brief time as vice president of Fordham Prep and University during the 1863-1864 school year, he headed north first to teach at a mission school among a congregation of German Jesuits at St. Stanislaus in Guelph, Ontario, and then to teach English and Latin at St. Mary’s College in Montreal. After a brief stint at St. Joseph’s Church in Troy, New York, he returned to Canada, splitting his time from 1866-1869 between St. Mary’s and ministering to lumberjack settlements and nearby Catholic Native American communities.

Fr. Nash was no stranger to the railroads throughout the early 1870s, serving as a retreat master back in Louisville, a military chaplain at Xavier and West Point, and an English teacher at the newly-opened Canisius College in Buffalo before heading north once again to live and work in and around Montreal. In 1874, he was sent back to St. Joseph’s in Troy. With the exception of a few semesters as spiritual director at Holy Cross in Worcester, Massachusetts and some time at St. Lawrence O’Toole Church in Manhattan (today, St. Ignatius on the Upper East Side), Nash would remain in Troy for the rest of his life, preaching and saying Mass, ministering to the sick through terrible winters and a deadly small-pox outbreak, and running a school for local boys considering the priesthood.

Fr. Michael Nash passed away on September 6, 1895, a few weeks before his seventy-first birthday. In his obituary, his brother Jesuits would describe Father as “brave man and naturally pugnacious; not afraid of danger and always ready for a daring expedition; and a capital storyteller who could amuse and interest his hearers for hours and hours.” In closing they would note, “Father Nash was exact in his religious duties. It is said that during the time he was with his Zouaves he never once missed saying his breviary. When not overcome by his fiery temper, he was amiable and made a number of warm friends. He was much loved by the poor wherever he went and he did not spare himself in laboring for them.”