Perry Nugent--"The Loss of Wealth was his Trial"

Below is a memorial to Perry Nugent, my husband's great-great grandfather. Perry was the father of Mary Ophelia Nugent, my husband's great-grandmother. He married Amanda Mariah Keep Cook, daughter of Paul Cook and Elizabeth Simmons.

From the obituaries of the Christian Advocate, Thursday, November 1, 1900 

Perry Nugent

It is never to late to remember the dead.  What does “In Memoriam” say?

        “O sorrow, then can sorrow wane?

        O grief, can grief be changed to less?

        O last regret—regret can die?

        No, mixed with all this mystic frame,

        Her deep relations are the same,

        But with long use her tears are dry.”

And Washington Irving?  “Sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced.”  This introduction is suggested by the fact that the man, brother, and friend of whom this paper shall treat, passed away from earth as much as five months since, and only now have the request and certain material together reached the writer, finding a ready response in his own heart.

Brief funeral services have their reason, but yet, on the other hand, reverence and affection do often want to linger about the dust in sight; and when we are gone ourselves we do not want ever to be forgotten.  I have never forgotten Perry Nugent, the subject of whom I write, since I was his pastor in New Orleans from 1871 to 1874, although while yet he lived, I had not seen him more than one time; and now that he has gone still farther away, I still remember him.  “Who is it puts that twenty-dollar gold piece in the basket?” I asked at last, when at each separate collection for missions, for Conference Fund, for education, and so on, there was the regular gold piece.  Perry Nugent, they told me.  I marked him for the man to call and count on for a contribution in case of any distress, private or public, a poor widow, or a Galveston flood, and the twenty-dollar gold piece or its just proportion was produced.  I called on him to pray in the congregation, but after one or two trials concluded to relieve his evidently great embarrassment.  No doubt if he had thought of it he would have come to me as Stonewall Jackson went to his pastor, who had similarly excused him for his difficult and halting speech; “Pastor,” said Jackson, “it is your duty to call on me; it is mine to do the best I can.”

Perry Nugent was born in Washington, Miss., January 20, 1831, and died in Greenville, Miss., May 14, 1900, in the seventieth year of his age.  One great-grandfather was Thomas Hardeman, for whom Hardeman County, Tenn., was named; his mother’s father was Seth Lewis, for twenty-seven years Circuit Judge of the Opelousas District, Louisiana.  His Methodism came through two generations of Methodists.  His boyhood was amiable, singularly without reproof or punishment.  He advanced rapidly in learning, and early developed the ability which made him afterwards a successful merchant.  He grew up a praying and Bible-reading man, and I found him a member and steward of the Carondelet Street M. E. Church, South, New Orleans—a worthy member, a faithful steward.  He was married December 1, 1853, to Amanda Keep Cook; the children were seven—Elizabeth, Anne, Helen, Perry Hardeman, Mary, Catherine, and Paul Cook, the last a man of letters.  The mother, now deceased, was a worthy companion for so good a man, and the reverence the sons and daughters had for their parents was as beautiful as it was just.  It is worth recording what the son, Paul C., says of his father in a letter to me, as follows—viz.: “I can express only a small part of the admiration which I have always felt for my father’s character.  To me he has seemed the perfect ideal of strength, of integrity, and of truthfulness.  I would as soon have thought of the reversal of every law of nature as I would of doubting his word in any matter.  To the strength and beauty of his nature were added a sweet affection and a noble liberality.  He was possessed of intelligence in a high degree, and I have many times been struck with the force and clearness of his conclusions.  Add to these qualities a love of nature that made communion with it a delight, and a deep appreciation of all that was beautiful in art, and you have my father as I knew him.  His whole life was a sermon on the stirring words of the text, ‘Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, . . . . . think on these things!’”

I found Perry Nugent a member of the firm of T. H. & J. M. Allen & Co, New Orleans, to which position he had arisen from being bookkeeper in the same house.  The following tribute was paid him by Mr. Ashton Phelps, in the New Orleans Times-Democrat:  ‘A dispatch from Greenville, Miss., brings intelligence of the death of Perry Nugent, sometime President of the New Orleans Cotton Exchange, and one of the most prominent merchants in the South.  The house of T. H. & J. M. Allen & Co. stood in the very front rank.  Mr. Nugent was noted for the strict integrity with which he safeguarded the interests of his firm’s correspondents.  A Christian who carried his religion into every relation, a citizen without fear and without reproach, a man of the most refined manners and the kindliest sympathies, Perry Nugent was a living illustration of the fact that the loftiest code of morality may be practiced to the letter amid all the storm and stress of the commercial life.  Although the deceased merchant’s declining years were spent in the shadow of impaired fortunes and absence from the scene of his early activities, time had no power to touch the pure gold of his nature.’

Another friend, Rev. J. A. B. Scherer, pastor of St. Andrews Lutheran Church, Charleston, S. C., writes of him: “I think the first thing about Perry Nugent was his soldierliness, a quality deeper than bravery.  I saw him during the bitterest battles a man ever can fight, and the sight was an inspiration.  I think the next thing was his sweet kindliness.  He saw the foibles of men as keenly as anybody, but he had that charity which covers the multitude of sins, and was a true gentleman.  Altogether, the impression he made upon me was most profound.  To sum it all in a word, he was the knightliest man I ever knew.’

So also another man, far from New Orleans, and in the presence of strangers, said of a certain other man, Perry Nugent: ‘Why, sir, he was the most honorable man I ever knew, the only one who would unhesitatingly sacrifice his best business interests for a principle.’

There are such men, as others have known, but Nugent was one, by above testimony.  A case in point may be quoted here: He was an assignee in a case in Greenville.  The head of the firm that assigned said: ‘Mr. Nugent, you have made a mistake.  You have not taken out all that was due you.’  He answered: “I took out all I was entitled to.’  The other: ‘No, you have not.  The law allows you so much.  It is yours and nobody else’s; you must have it.’  He said: ‘No; I know the law allows it; but I have taken enough to pay me a reasonable amount for my work.  If I had taken any more, I would have felt like I was robbing the creditors.’ 

Having lost an ample fortune, in the later years of his life he was employed by others.  His last employer made him a present of money, saying that it was a tribute to his fidelity and given so that he might visit his children in Salem, Va., whom he had not seen for some time.  Instead of spending the money in that way, however, he denied himself the pleasure of the trip, and paid the sum to a creditor to whom he had been in debt for some time.  Such actions speak louder than words of affectionate eulogy.

The loss of wealth was his trial, and the fire was hot; but eventually the gold of his faith came out refined and precious.  He died in great peace, and this paper is written con amore by the pastor who enjoyed his friendship and often admired his gentle spirit.

  W. V. TUDOR

Note: Perry Nugent's parents were John Pratt Nugent (1792-1873) and Anne Lewis Nugent (1807-1873). John Pratt Nugent married Anne Lewis in 1827.