The blending of two prominent and historic Texas families started at Baylor University in Waco when Elihu Reuel Nash saw the beautiful Louise Harris Higginbotham descending the women’s only staircase in Old Main Hall in 1904 and broke Baylor’s rule by ascending the women’s stairs and introducing himself to her.
They met again at the First Baptist Church in Waco where both were members and later played very prominent parts in the development and the growth of that institution.
Louise Harris Higginbotham was the eldest child of Rufus Wilson Higginbotham and Hattie Louise Smith of Dublin, Texas and later of Dallas. Her father was an entrepreneur who started and owned many businesses in Dallas and throughout Texas from clothing to hardware. Elihu Reuel Nash, Jr. was the eldest son of Elihu Reuel Nash, Sr., founder and president of the Nash-Robinson Lumber Company in Waco and his wife, Frances Mitchell Nash, the daughter of Harvey Mitchell and his wife Arthusia Jane Mitchell. Both fathers had come to Texas shortly after the Civil War.
Elihu and Louise married in Dublin, Texas in the Higginbotham family home. They both loved having family around them, sharing experiences with them. After the ceremony the two went to the railroad station in Dublin to catch the train for their honeymoon and were surprised when the entire wedding party boarded the train with them to continue the celebration. The wedding party, however, left the train in Fort Worth and the newly married couple rode on to catch the boat to Cuba for their honeymoon.
They settled in Waco where Elihu worked with his father at the lumber company. When his father passed away, he took over as the president of that company as well as his father’s responsibility as Treasurer at the First Baptist Church. Louise also served the church in starting the Bride’s Sunday School Class which later became the Matron’s class and finally just the Louise Nash Class for fifty years. Elihu and Louise loved children and were blessed with five. Those five gave them sixteen grandchildren and as of 2012, seventy-three great and great-great grandchildren. Approximately eighty of them gathered recently for a three-day reunion to re-new old ties and meet new family members.
(This story will appear in the new Higginbotham cookbook in about 2012.)
–Louise Mosley Smith
E R Nash Sr. and Family 