John Forbes Nash, Sr.

John Forbes Nash, Sr., was "proper, painstaking, and very serious, a very conservative man in every respect," according to his daughter Martha Nash Legg.

What saved him from dullness was a sharp, inquiring mind. A Texas native, he came from the rural gentry, teachers and farmers, pious, frugal Puritans and Scottish Baptists who migrated west from New England and the Deep South.

He was born in 1892 on his maternal grandparents' plantation on the banks of the Red River in northern Texas, the youngest of three children of Martha Smith and Alexander Quincy Nash.

He was a veteran of WW1 and had served in France as a lieutenant in the supply services and consequently had not been in actual front lines combat in the war.

He was originally from Texas and had obtained his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Texas Agricultural and Mechanical (Texas A. and M.). 

Came to Bluefield from Texas to work for the electrical utility company there which was and is the Appalachian Electric Power Company.