Georgia and Georgians - the Digital Library of Georgia

3108 GEORGIA AND GEORGIANS1781 he succeeded Thomas Jefferson as governor of Virginia. His deathoccurred in 1789.Hugh Nelson, the fifth son of Governor Thomas Nelson, and grandfatherof the present bishop of Atlanta, was likewise a man of distinction in Virginiaaffairs, and successively served as speaker of the house of delegates; judge ofthe Federal Court; presidential elector; representative of Virginia in Congress from 1811 to 1823, and as minister to Spain under President JamesMonroe. Hugh Nelson married Eliza Kinloch, only child of Judge FrancisKinloch of Charleston, South Carolina.Eighth among the children of Judge Hugh Nelson, Keating L. S. Nelsondid his chief service in life as an educator in his native state. In 1862 heenlisted in the Confederate service, becoming a private in the Albemaiie LightHorse Cavalry of Virginia, but was discharged upon the enlistment of two ofhis sons, one of whom was killed in battle in 1864.Part of Bishop Nelson's early boyhood was spent in the confusion of theCivil war period. He acquired his early education in his father's school inAlbemarle County and then entered St. John's College at Annapolis, Maryland, where he was graduated A. B. in 1872. St John's College conferredupon him the degree D. D. in 1891, and he was similarly honored by theUniversity of the South in 1892. He completed his ecclesiastical course inprivate and took a brief course in special studies at Berkley Divinity Schoolin Middletown, Connecticut.He was ordained a deacon in the Protestant Episcopal Church in 1875, byBishop Pinkney of Maryland, the ceremony taking place in the old AscensionChurch in Washington, D. C. In 1876 he was ordained to the priesthood atthe apostolic hands of Bishop William Bacon Stevens of the Diocese of Pennsylvania, himself a native Georgian, at the Holy Trinity Church in Philadelphia. His first service was as rector of the Church of St. John the Baptistin Germantown, Pennsylvania, where he remained from 1876 until 1882. Inthe latter year he became rector of the Church of the Nativity, South Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, and was there until his elevation to his present office in1892.Bishop Nelson's ancestors have been identified with the Church of Englandor its American body, the Protestant Episcopal Church, in the various generations and as far back as the family records are to be traced. In politicshis ancestors in America were old-line whigs and he is himself a democrat.Bishop Nelson is a man of ripe scholarship, an able speaker, and during thepast twenty-three years has distinguished himself by his executive administration of his diocese. On June 12,1877, he married Miss M. Bruce Matthews,daughter of Maj. William Bruce and Nannie (Dorsett) Matthews, of CharlesCounty, Maryland.REV. HUGH ROBERTSON BERNARD. The Baptist Church of Georgia lostone of its oldest and most capable servants, and a forceful worker in the fieldof Christianity for half a century, in the death of Rev. Hugh RobertsonBernard, which occurred August 13, 1916.During his lifetime his work did not pass without appreciation, and it isfortunate that in the last year of his life a well written biography was pre-. pared of him and published under the auspices of the church which he servedso long. It is from the materials of that brief biography that the following.paragraphs are taken.He was born in Robertson County, Tennessee, January 25, 1843, and wasin his seventy-fourth year when death called him. His father, Joseph Bernard,was at one time a prominent planter in Wilson County, Tennessee. The lateRev. Hugh R. Bernard was reared on a farm and until his seventeenth yearattended country schools, the schools being supported by private enterprisein the community. A schoolmate and friend of his in those early days was