Elias Nason

Elias Nason (21 April 1811 in Wrentham, Massachusetts – 17 June 1887 in North Billerica, Massachusetts) was a Massachusetts Congregational clergyman, educator, editor and author.

Biography He started working for a paper mill in Framingham, Massachusetts, in 1826, and attended school on the side. After five years, he left to study for a year with Chauncey Colton and Justin Perkins at Amherst College. Then he entered Brown University and taught on the side to finance his studies. He graduated from Brown in 1835.

He spent five months as principal of Cambridge Latin Grammar School, and in 1836 married Myra Anne Bigelow. They had six children eventually. After leaving Cambridge Latin, he sailed for Charleston, South Carolina, with naturalist John E. Holbrook.

His cousin Henry Bradford Nason was a noted chemist.

Works Songs for the School Room (Boston, 1842) Chrestomathie Française (1849) Memoir of Rev. Nathaniel Howe (1851) Thou Shalt Not Steal (1852) Strength and Beauty of the Sanctuary (1854) Congregational Hymn Book (1857) Congregational Hymn and Tune Book (1858) Our Obligations to Defend our Country, and Sermons on the War (1861) Songs for Social and Public Worship (1862) Eulogy on Edward Everett (1865) Fountains of Salvation (1865) Eulogy on Abraham Lincoln (1865) Life of Sir Charles Henry Frankland (1865) Memoir of Mrs. Susanna Rowson (1870) Gazetteer of Massachusetts (1872) Life of Henry Wilson (1872) Lives of Moody and Sankey (1872) History of Middlesex County (1872) The Life and Times of Charles Sumner: His Boyhood, Education and Public Career (Boston: B. B. Russell, 1874) History of the Town of Dunstable, Massachusetts, with George Bailey Loring (1877) Samuel Adams Drake, compiler, History of Middlesex County, Massachusetts, article on Hopkinton (pp. 483–495) in Volume 1 (A-H), and article on Tyngsborough (pp. 391–399) in Volume 2 (L-W) (1879–1880) He also left in manuscript a “History of Hopkinton” and a “History of the Nason Family.”