Thomas Nast His body was returned to the United States, where he was interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City. Nast's depictions of iconic characters, such as Santa Claus and Uncle Sam, are widely credited as forming the basis of popular depictions used today. Additional contributions by Nast include: In December 2011, a proposal to include Nast in the New Jersey Hall of Fame in 2012 caused controversy. "The Wall Street Journal" reported that because of his stereotypical cartoons of the Irish, a number of objections were raised about Nast's work. For example, "The Usual Irish Way of
Thomas Nast Landau, and for a time received Catholic education in New York City. When Nast converted to Protestantism remains unclear, but his conversion was likely formalized upon his marriage in 1861. (The family were practicing Episcopalians at St. Peter's in Morristown.) Nast considered the Catholic Church to be a threat to American values. According to his biographer, Fiona Deans Halloran, Nast was "intensely opposed to the encroachment of Catholic ideas into public education". When Tammany Hall proposed a new tax to support parochial Catholic schools, he was outraged. His savage 1871 cartoon "The American River Ganges", depicts Catholic bishops, guided by