Harry Wood Nash

Harry Wood Nash, 1869-1902

(My great grandfather)

Harry Wood Nash was born in Abington, Massachusetts, a southern suburb of Boston, in 1869. He was the oldest of three children born to Edward Everett Nash and Hannah Williams Nash.

The Nash's were long time Boston area residents – both Edward's father, Nathaniel Nash Jr. and his grandfather, Nathaniel Nash Sr., were from Massachusetts. Nathaniel Nash Sr. was born about 1780 but his birth location is not known nor is his ancestry. However, the Nash surname was most commonly found in Great Britain.

Edward Nash was a carpenter by trade and his wife, Hannah, was a homemaker. In addition to Harry, they had Frederick William Nash, born in 1872, and Neva Nash, born in 1875. Both Fred and Neva were born in the Akron, Ohio area, since Edward and Hannah had moved there shortly after 1870.

Fred was a metallurgist and mining engineer and we know from passport records that he traveled to Mexico at least once to pursue his occupation. Fred married Violet Irene Preston in 1901 in Denver, and together they had two daughters, Virginia and Consuelo. Violet was born in Denver in 1877. Before 1910, Fred and Neva moved to San Diego and stayed there the rest of their lives.

Family lore has it that Fred owned a company, Bullfrog Marble and Mining Quarry, and was killed in a car “accident”. His partner in the company then stole it from Violet and her daughters and left them penniless.

Neva was an “old maid” school teacher and never married. Although she was born in Ohio, she moved back to her father's home area, Massachusetts, and taught school there for many years before retiring to St. Petersburg, Florida. At least once she traveled to Cuba on holiday.

Although Harry was born in Massachusetts, he was taken by his father and mother to Ohio when he was about two years old. Because the 1890 Census was lost, we don't know where the family was in that era. There is no evidence that Edward or Hannah ever traveled to Colorado so Harry may have struck out on his own.

As we know, Harry married Susan Pearl Miller in 1891, in the Trinidad, Colorado area. At the time, he was 22 and she was 14, four months short of her 15^th birthday. It is likely that Fred followed his older brother, Harry, to Colorado since he married Violet there in 1901.

Harry and Susan had three children, Arletta Florence born in 1893, Edward Everett (his grandfather's namesake) born in 1894, and Sedelia born in 1897. All three of these children were born in Las Animas County in the Trinidad area.

In June, 1898, when their youngest child Sedelia was about 8 months old, Susan deserted Harry and moved to Pitkin County in the Aspen area. The whereabouts of the three children during this period are unknown. In July, 1899, Harry was awarded a divorce from Susan on the grounds of desertion. No mention of the three children was made in the divorce papers; it is assumed that they had been abandoned.

In July, 1900, Susan married Richard Leace Young in Grand Junction, Colorado. She and Richard had another ten to fifteen children, the exact number is unknown. In her obituary, it was stated that she was the mother of eighteen children. Some time around 1924, she divorced Richard and married James Adair. They had no children together. Susan died in 1939 in Twin Falls, Idaho at the age of 62.

At the time of Harry's divorce from Susan, he had moved to the Denver area, in Arapahoe County. He died in 1902 at the age of 33 and is buried at Fairmount Cemetery in Denver. The cause of death was listed as pneumonia. At the time of death, Harry's occupation was listed as “labourer”.