Nash, B. W. Baptist Harmony, A New Collection of Hymns and Spiritual Songs. La Grange, N. C.: Published and For Sale by the Author, 1876. First Edition. [8467]
Blindstamped black leather, title in gilt to spine, 3 x 4 1/2 inches, 1/2 inch crack top front hinge, all good and tight. (vi.), 312 pp., complete, a bit shaken, nothing detached. Good. Full leather.
Not in Starr, Music & Richardson, or Reynolds. WorldCat with 1 location; University of Mount Olive, NC. A second edition appeared in 1884; that one has 2 locations. A rather scarce hymnal.
"There are a number of Baptist churches in this and other southern States, who believe and teach the doctrine of free salvation, and Open Communion; and it is for their use and benefit that the Baptist Harmony has been published." - Preface.
Bushrod Washington Nash (1831-1912), b. Westmoreland Co., Virginia; d. Goldsboro, North Carolina. "Nash was a Union Baptist, a small denomination founded in Virginia by James W. Hunnicutt in about 1841. Nash was sent from there to North Carolina in 1858. He quickly gained influence among the Alfred Moore faction of the original General Free Will Baptist Conference of North Carolina and convinced them to join the Union Baptists, who also held a 'free will' doctrine." This group held to free grace, free will, and open communion. The Union Baptist aim was to unite all Baptists in the South who held to these beliefs into one organization. "By the end of the Civil War in 1865, Nash had become the leader of the Union Baptists and of efforts toward the union of liberal Baptists in the South. In 1873, he began publishing The Baptist Review, first in LaGrange and later in Goldsboro, North Carolina." The movement faded by about the year 1900. Quotations from Picirilli, Unity Movements among Free Will Baptists of the South Near the Turn of the Century, at Helwys Society Forum online.
With a signed provenance card from the collection of A. Merril Smoak, Jr., DWS.