William Frederick Nast (1840–1893) was an American diplomat and entrepreneur. He was the third president of the

Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway The Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway , often referred to as the Santa Fe or AT&SF, was one of the larger railroads in the United States. The railroad was chartered in February 1859 to serve the cities of Atchison, Kansas, Atchison and Top ...

. Nast was born in

Cincinnati Cincinnati ( ) is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Hamilton County. Settled in 1788, the city is located at the northern side of the confluence of the Licking and Ohio rivers, the latter of which marks the state line wit ...

Ohio Ohio () is a state in the Midwestern region of the United States. Of the fifty U.S. states, it is the 34th-largest by area, and with a population of nearly 11.8 million, is the seventh-most populous and tenth-most densely populated. The sta ...

, on June 14, 1840, the son of Methodist religious leader William Nast. From 1861 to 1865 he served at the American Consulate in Stuttgart, Germany. Upon his return to the US, Nast entered the brokerage business in New York City. On September 2, 1868, Nast became president of the

, a position he held for less than a month, ending on September 24, 1868. Also in 1868, he married Esther A. Benoist, a daughter of pioneer St. Louis banker Louis Auguste Benoist. They had four children: Louis, Condé, Ethel, and Estelle. While living in Europe, William Nast filed for several invention patents, including one for "improvements in the treatment of stable manure, and in the manufacture of paper" on July 6, 1876, awarded February 22, 1878, and one for "improvements in the manufacture of dextrine, sugar and the like, from cellulose and ligneous materials" on November 4, 1880, and , awarded on December 13, 1887. He died in 1893, and was buried at Calvary Cemetery in

St. Louis St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the bi-state metropolitan area, which e ...

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* * * * 1840 births Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railway presidents Businesspeople from Cincinnati 1893 deaths 19th-century American inventors 19th-century American businesspeople {{US-rail-bio-stub