C. C. Nash: Winn Parish, Louisiana Submitted by Greggory E. Davies 120 Ted Price Lane Winnfield, LA 71483 ********************************************** Copyright. All rights reserved. http://usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://usgwarchives.net/la/lafiles.htm ********************************************** C. C. Nash Captain Columbus C. Nash, a successful Colfax, Louisiana merchant, was among those men of brain, energy and foresight, who have became prominent in their different callings. He was born in Sabine Parish, La., July 1, 1838, a son of Valentine and Mary Anderson Nash, who emigrated from Mississippi to Sabine Parish in 1838, being among the pioneers of that region. There the mother died, but the father was still living in Sabine Parish at the unusual age of ninety-six years, in 1925. Capt. C. C. Nash went to Virginia among the first troops that volunteered in the late Civil War, and was a member of the Sixth Louisiana Regiment, in command of Company A of that regiment. He was in twenty-three prominent engagements in Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, and was captured at the Battle of Chancellorsville. Three weeks later he was released, and subsequently recaptured near Culpepper Court House, at the beginning of the Wilderness. He was confined in prison at Johnson's Island until after the cessation of hostilities. He was a brave captain, and has a fine war record, but his bravery was not all confined to war practice. In 1870 he located in Colfax, Grant Parish, as a merchant, and being at all times an outspoken and partisan Democrat, he incurred the bitter enmity of the corrupt officials who then held sway under Republican rule, and in the following fall he was arrested and taken to New Orleans, charged with being a Kuklux. He remained in prison until the following spring (1872), and then came back to Grant Parish. He was elected sheriff in April, 1873. At the instigation of Gov. W. P. Kellogg, aided and abetted by corrupt Republican officials, a riot was incited among the negroes of Grant Parish, under the leadership of Ward, Phillips, Shaw, and others, who took forcible possession of the courthouse and parish records, and subplanted the legally elected officials. Capt. Nash recognizing this act as a high-handed outrage against the liberties of a free people, and intended only to make political capital to bolster up the tottering power of Kellogg, He aided in raising a posse of about 150 citizens, which drove the mob, numbering about 450, from the entrenchments which they had erected in front of the courthouse. This gallant act was recognized by the people of Louisiana and the nation as one of the main events which led to placing the state government in the hands of the whites. Following the restoration of peace in Grant Parish, Capt. Nash returned to his mercantile business, and lived a quiet and uneventful life. He owned the ground on which his store and residence stood and this was the identical spot on which the negroes had entrenched themselves. He married the only daughter of R. B. Williams, of Montgomery, La., March 6, 1879. (Source: "Biographical & Historical Memoirs of Northwest Louisiana", 1890. Submitted by Greggory Ellis Davies, Winnfield, Winn Parish, Louisiana) Christopher C. Nash One of the most noted characters in Grant Parish history was Christopher C. Nash, a brave soldier of the law and a southern gentleman. He was born July 21, 1838 at Columbus, Mississippi. He was a nephew of Abner Nash, and a grand-nephew of Reuben Nash, a colonel in the Revolutionary War. His father, Volentine Nash, moved to Natchitoches Parish in 1838, locating in what would become Sabine Parish in 1843. Christopher C. Nash volunteered in the Sabine Rifles under Captain McArthur, a native of Maine who came to Sabine Parish as a lawyer and school teacher. Captain McArthur was killed at the Battle of Winchester after having been promoted to major. The Sabine Rifles became Company A of the Second Louisiana Infantry of Harry T. Hayes' celebrated brigade, Stonewall Jackson's corps, Army of Northern Virginia. C. C. Nash became lieutenant, commanding his company, and was in thirty-six battles, including the first and second Battles of Manassas or Bull Run, in the Shenendoah Campaign, the first Battle of Winchester, under the command of General Dick Taylor, and the Battle of Rapidan Station, where he was captured in 1863 and for a year and a half imprisoned at Johnson's Island on Lake Erie. After the war he was furnished transportation to Louisville and then came by steamboat to the mouth of the Red River and walked home. After Grant Parish was created in 1868,. Nash moved to Colfax along with Bullitt, Scarboro, Rutland, Richardson, Shackelford, March, Langford, and others. A few years later occurred the bloody conflict between the carpetbag element and the whites, eventually resulting in what is known in history as the Colfax insurrection. After two or three murders of peaceful white men a number of residents of Grant Parish gathered and seeking out Delos W. White, a former provost marshal, W. B. Phillips, a renegade from Texas, seized them at Rock Island Plantation, killing White. The United States Marshal then arrested among others, Christopher C. Nash, who was held in confinement at New Orleans for eighteen months before being released. At the next election Governor Kellog commissioned two sets of officers for Grant Parish, one of them democratic and the other, radical republican. Among the democratic officials was C. C. Nash, sheriff. A gang of several hundred armed Negroes soon afterwards took possession of the courthouse, driving out Nash and his fellow democrats, installing republicans instead, and also took possession of the village, driving most whites across Red River. Mr. Nash, as sheriff, raised a force of white men from Montgomery, Winn, Catahoula, and Rapides Parishes, among other places, following which took place the war of reconstruction in Grant Parish. The Negroes were armed with Springfield rifles furnished by Governor Kellog and were under Kellog. The whites were under the command of Nash, who held his posse at Summerfield, five miles north of Colfax. On Easter Sunday, April 13, 1873, after three and a half hours of fighting, 185 white men defeated 800 Negroes, killing 168 of them. The governor then sent out a force of the metropolitan police to arrest some of the leaders in the Colfax riot. Mr. Nash was hemmed in by the metropolitans but swam Red River on his horse amidst the patter of bullets. Reaching the opposite shore, he waved his felt hat in defiance to them and was off. Captain Nash married into a splendid family, taking for his wife Miss Malinda Williams, daughter of Richard B. Williams. (Source: Chambers' A History of Louisiana, 1925; other materials on file from various sources held by submitter, Greggory Ellis Davies, Winnfield, Winn Parish, La.)