William Pinckney Nason
Vice president & Professor of English, 1867-1887
Interim President, 1881-1882

WP Nason, son of James & Margaret Nason was born in Fairfield District, SC, May 16, 1824, but was raised in Georgia and Mississippi.  He attended college in Fayetteville, TN for one term in 1849, read medicine with his brother, a practicing physician, for a while in 1852 and attended another term at South Hanover College, Madison, KY in 1855.  He taught school in Kentucky & Mississippi from 1849 till 1857 then he and a friend, William Thomas Baird, moved to Kirksville, MO.

In Kirksville, Baird settled down as a banker and Nason continued teaching, but did not settle down.  He alternated between teaching in area rural schools and operating his own school in town until 1862 and for a year, 1860-61, also held the part-time position of Adair County School Commissioner.  He moved to Green Lake, WI in 1862, back to Kirksville in 1865, to Carroll County, KY for a few months in 1865 and, finally, back to Kirksville in 1866.  He was Principal of a school in Kirksville when Joseph Baldwin opened his Normal School in 1867 and asked him to join the faculty.  He remained with the First District Normal for twenty years, serving as Interim President for a year after Baldwin’s resignation in 1881.

Nason was ordained a minister of the Cumberland Presbyterian Church in 1869 and served as pastor of the church in Kirksville, 1870-71.  When he was dropped from the Normal School faculty in 1887, a controversial move that ultimately led to the resignation of President Blanton, he pastored several churches in northeast Missouri before retiring in 1891. He also  worked with Western College in La Belle, MO for a couple of years.  In 1900, the Normal School Board of Regents awarded him the title of President & Professor of Ethics Emeritus.

Nason and Wisconsin native Sarah Cowan married January 23, 1859, and had two sons, William B and James C.   Sarah and another infant son died in Green Lake in 1864.  His second wife was Sarah Ann (Griffiths) Thompson, a widow with a young daughter, Emmir.  They married in Kirksville June 12, 1866, and had one son, George Frank.  After Sarah’s death in 1907, WP lived with George in Delaware for a couple of years but had decided to reestablish his home in Kirksville.  He was on his way back when he became so ill that he had to be carried from the train when it arrived. He was taken to the house of his old friend, WT Baird, where he died the evening of July 16, 1909.  He was buried at Forest Cemetery.

One of the dormitories on the campus was named Nason Hall in his honor and his portrait hangs in the Presidents Gallery.