Carrie Nation

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Temperance advocate Carrie Nation and her hatchet.

Carrie Amelia Nation (November 25, 1846 – June 9, 1911) was a member of the temperance movement—the battles against alcohol in pre-Prohibition America. She has been the topic of numerous books, articles and even a 1966 opera at the University of Kansas.

Born Carrie Moore in Garrard County, Kentucky, Nation attributed her passion for fighting liquor to a failed first marriage to an alcoholic. She got her myth-making last name from her second husband, David Nation.

The spelling of her first name is ambiguous; both "Carrie" and "Carry" are considered correct. Official records list the former, and she herself used that spelling most of her life; the latter was used by her father in the family Bible. Upon beginning her campaign against liquor in the early 20th century, she adopted the name Carry A. Nation mainly for its value as a slogan, and had it registered as a trademark in the state of Kansas.^{[citation needed]}

1 Biography
2 Works about Nation
3 See also
4 External links

[edit] Biography

Nation grew up in Garrard County, Kentucky on present day Fisher Ford Drive in what most would consider trying circumstances. She was in ill health much of the time; her family experienced a number of financial setbacks and moved several times, finally settling in Belton, Missouri. Some sources indicate that her mother went through periods where she had delusions of being Queen Victoria, and that young Carrie was often tended to in the slave quarters as a result.

In 1865 she met Dr. Charles Gloyd, and they were married on November 21, 1867. Gloyd was, by all accounts, a severe alcoholic; they separated shortly before the birth of their daughter, Charlien, and he died less than a year later, in 1869. Nation attributed her passion for fighting liquor to her failed first marriage to heavy-drinking Gloyd.

Nation acquired a teaching certificate, but was unable to make ends meet in this field. She then met Dr. David A. Nation, an attorney, minister and newspaper editor, nineteen years her senior. They were married on December 27, 1877, and moved to a cotton plantation near Houston, Texas. Dr. Nation became involved in the Jaybird-Woodpecker War, and as a result was forced to move back north in 1889, this time to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, where David found work preaching at a Christian church, and Carrie ran a successful hotel. It was while in Medicine Lodge that she began her temperance work.

A large woman (nearly 6 feet tall and 175 pounds) she described herself as "a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn't like",^{[citation needed]} and claimed a divine ordination to promote temperance by smashing up bars.

Alone or accompanied by hymn-singing women, she would march into a bar and sing and pray, while smashing bar fixtures and stock with a hatchet. Between 1900 and 1910 she was arrested some 30 times, and paid her jail fines from lecture-tour fees and sales of souvenir hatchets.^{[citation needed]} She published newsletters and later in life appeared in vaudeville.

Nation was a member of the Woman's Christian Temperance Union, founded in 1874, which dealt with issues ranging from health and hygiene, prison reform and world peace.

Near the end of her life, she moved to Eureka Springs, Arkansas where she founded the home known as Hatchet Hall. A spring just across the street from the house is named after her.

She collapsed during a speech in a Eureka Springs park and was taken to a hospital in Leavenworth, Kansas. She died there on June 9, 1911, and was buried in an unmarked grave in Belton City Cemetery in Belton, Missouri. The Women's Christian Temperance Union later erected a stone inscribed "Faithful to the Cause of Prohibition, She Hath Done What She Could."

Nation also operated under the alias Mary Pat Clarke.^{[citation needed]}

[edit] Works about Nation

The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation (1905) by Carry Nation
Carry Nation (1929) by Herbert Asbury
Cyclone Carry: The Story of Carry Nation (1962) by Carleton Beals
Vessel of Wrath: The Life and Times of Carry Nation (1966) by Robert Lewis Taylor
Carry A. Nation : Retelling The Life (2001) by Fran Grace