Alexander Nash papers

Alexander Nash was born in 1861 to Caleb and Rachel Nash, who owned a farm near Brazil, Indiana. Caleb Nash died in 1863, a casualty of the Civil War. Alexander, the youngest of his siblings, was evidently the only one to attend college. After he left DePauw he moved to Independence, Kansas, and subsequently to towns in the area where he worked for various schools as a teacher and principal. Running on the Republican ticket he was elected as Superintendent of Schools for Montgomery County around 1889. During this period he was also president of the county teachers association and newspaper coverage in the period demonstrates his ambitions to improve teaching in the county at that point in his career. He held the Superintendent position until a Populist landslide removed his party from office in 1894. He returned to teaching but also bought an interest in an insurance business in Coffeyville, Kansas. His life took a downward turn about this point, with the loss of a leg in a hunting accident and the death of his second child. He removed to Bannock County, Idaho, where his family eventually joined him. There he worked in business and later as a teacher. By the 1920s he was living away from his family in Helena, Montana. He died there in 1939. His obituary ran in at least three Montana newspapers suggesting some regional reputation and identified him as a retired teacher and author of articles in the Saturday Evening Post and Collier's Weekly.