“She lacked no means of cultivating the rare powers of mind which she early developed. Many things she seemed to learn intuitively. Her scholarship was bright, quick, accurate. Literature was her delight. Her mother’s father, Judge McGaw, whose white locks and venerable presence then honored Bangor, was an interested and judicious guide in the home reading.
“In social life few shone more brilliantly, or were more admired and sought after. In those days, the beauty of person of the young lady was of a rare and noticeable type. Her conversational powers were fascinating. She had by nature genuine histrionic talent, and in conversation, reading, or reciting seemed to be completely the person she sought to represent. On one occasion, by a slight change of dress, voice, and manner, she appeared as an aged widow, pleading with a high officer of the government at Washington, to help her find her son, lost in the troublous times of the war.”
The “only sister, a little taller,” Mrs. Katie Foster Howard, thus testifies of Nina’s early life:—
“When a little child, from eight to twelve years old, she and some of her companions formed ‘a praying circle,’ and had a little room in one of their homes which they called The House of Prayer. They met often in this room, and delighted to decorate it after their childish fashion.
“Another favorite occupation was the teaching of some poor children whom she and one or two friends brought out of their dreary homes to the church vestibule, and there taught to sew and read.
“When eleven years old she was examined by the pastor and church officers for admission to the church; they asked her how long she had loved Jesus, and she answered,’Oh, a great many years.’”
Mrs. Howard speaks of her sister as “the little girl in the Eastern home, whose spirituelle face, with its halo of golden hair, seemed so much more of heaven than of earth as to cause the frequent, anxious comment that this world could not long detain her. An active, happy child among her playmates, her thoughts were often upon heavenly things, and her desire was to turn theirs thitherward, yet without anything morbid or unchildlike in her ways.
“As she grew to womanhood, she was the delight of the home which so tenderly shielded her from every rude blast, and of a large circle of attached friends. She possessed those charms of person and manners and qualities of mind which won admiration, and peculiarly fitted her to enjoy and adorn society. So when the time came for her to change this for a secluded life, many regretted that the fine gold should be sent where baser metal, as they thought, would do as well; that the noble woman, so eminently fitted for usefulness in circles of refinement, should spend her life among the degraded and unappreciative savages. But the event has proved that only such a nature, abounding in resources, could be the animating spirit of a model home in the wilderness; which should be an object-lesson of Christian culture not only to the Indian but to the army people, who were her only white neighbors, and who for her sake could look with interest on a work too often an object of contempt. And thus the reflex influence upon those who missed her from their number, or met her as she journeyed to her field of labor, has been in proportion to the grace of her refinement and the depth and breadth of her character. God, who spared not his own Son, still gives his choicest ones to the salvation of men.”
While on a visit to Chicago, in the family of her sister, she first became acquainted with Thomas L. Riggs, then a student in the theological seminary. Their mutual love soon compelled her to consider what it would be to share in his life-work. She recognized its hardships and deprivations as could hardly have been expected in one so inexperienced in life’s trials. She afterward often playfully said she was “not a missionary, only a missionary’s wife.” But it was a double consecration, joyous and entire, to the life of wife and missionary.
Thomas and Nina were married at her home in Bangor, December 26, 1872. It is said, “Christian people, and even Christian ministers, were inclined to say, ‘Why this waste?’” Some did say it. Some spoke in bitter and almost angry condemnation of her course. That this beautiful and accomplished girl, eminently fitted to adorn any society, should devote herself to a missionary life, occasioned much comment in the social circle in which she had been prominent. What could she do for the coarse, degraded Indian women, that might not be better done by a less refined, sensitive, and elevated nature? Why shut up her beauty and talents in the log cabin of an Indian missionary? It was a shock to some who had preached self-sacrifice, and a painful surprise to many who had been praying the Lord of the harvest to send laborers. But none of these things moved her. There has seldom been a sweeter and more lovely bride. The parents too made the consecration, while they wrestled in spirit. The father writes: “I gave her up when she left us on that winter’s night. It was a hard struggle, but I think I gave her unconditionally to God, to whom she so cheerfully gave herself.”