Reverend Wesley Nall of Texas County, Missouri

Rev. Wesley Nall, pastor of the Methodist Episcopal Church, Houston charge, and a resident of Elk Creek, Cass Township, was born in Chatham County, N. C., July 26, 1822. He is a son of John and Dorcas (Ansley) Nall, and grandson of John Nall, Sr., who was the son of a Revolutionary soldier, and presumably of English descent. The Nalls were people of large stature; were very tenacious of their religious faith, and were early settlers of the “Palmetto State.” Rev. Wesley Nall was the eldest of a family of seven sons and three daughters. He remained and assisted his father on the farm in North Carolina until his seventeenth year, when, in October, 1838, he removed with his parents, who were identified with Marshall and Dickson Counties, Tenn., five years; then to Missouri in 1843. Here the father made a home for himself and family upon Elk Creek for nineteen years. He died in Johnson County, Kas., in 1865, in his sixty-seventh year, at the home of his second son, Thomas. His wife followed him in 1875, in her seventy-fifth year. Rev. Wesley Nall was reared to the faith of the Methodist Episcopal Church, and August 29, 1842, he embraced the religion of Christ. August 7, 1847, he was licensed to exhort, and, in October, 1851, to preach, having followed his ministerial duties for over forty-one years. He married, July 26, 1847, Miss Nancy Self, a native of St. Louis County, Mo., and the daughter of Fountain and Sarah (Sullins) Self, natives of Kentucky and Missouri, respectively. To Mr. and Mrs. Nall were born these children, three sons and two daughters living: Samuel, of San Francisco, Cal., and a carpenter and builder by occupation; G. C., who is also a carpenter of the same place; Sarah, wife of Austin Grisham, of Elk Creek; A. B., of Kansas City, Mo., and Naomi Jane, wife of Richard Forsythe, of Willow Springs, Mo.; another son, John F., died in Kansas, January 25, 1882, aged twenty-six years, and left a son and daughter. Mr. and Mrs. Nall also lost three other children in infancy. Mr. Nall is a Blue Lodge Mason, and has served in the school board of his district. He has 200 acres of land in one tract, 100 under cultivation, and his post-office is Elk Creek, Mo.