Biography: Carrie Nation

Medicine Lodge, Kansas is a small town 80 miles southwest of Wichita, Kansas.
In 1890 Carry A. Nation and her 2nd husband moved to Medicine Lodge, Kansas from Texas. This is where she helped organize the Woman's Temperance Union.

Generations today are asked, "Do you know who Carry Nation was?" and of course, they answer "no." As a person who had family that was raised in Medicine Lodge, I have the privilege to say, my great-great grandmother knew Carry Nation. Carry changed the spelling of her name from "ie" to "y" right before the temperance movement.

Carrie Amelia Moore was born in Garrard County, Kentucky, on November 25, 1846. Her parents, George Moore and May Campbell were prosperous slave-holding plantation owners. Carry was not a strong child; she spent most of her time reading the bible. Her home atmosphere was very religious and stern upbringing. On her mothers side there was evidence of insanity.

The Moores moved a number of times. During the civil war her father lost his fortune so in 1865 the family settled in Belton, Missouri. This is where Carry earned a teaching certificate at the state normal school.

In 1867, Carry married a young physician, Dr. Charles Gloyd on November 21, 1867, in Belton, Missouri. Charles soon became an alcoholic and was a failure in providing a living. Carry loved Charles and was pregnant but she left him and returned home. Their daughter, Charlien, was born, weak of mind, and Carry believed this was due to Charles drinking. Charles died six months later.

Carry was an unsuccessful schoolteacher and her daughter was expensive and troubled for years from her illness, so Carry decided her best chance making a living was to marry again. She married David Nation, a lawyer, minister, and editor. He was nineteen years her senior, in 1877.

The family moved to Texas where Carry ran a small hotel in Columbia, Texas. Later the family moved to Medicine Lodge, Kansas where David Nation became a pastor of a local church and Carry taught Sunday school. This is how my great-great grandmother new Carry Nation. Carry taught her Sunday school class.

In 1889 a fire broke out just stopping short of the Nation's hotel and this convinced her that she was divinely shielded. Her religious passion increasingly took the form of hallucinations and public displays.

In 1880, Kansas adopted a constitutional amendment prohibiting the manufacture and sale of intoxicating beverages, except for medicinal purposes. The saloonkeepers violated the law, so Carry asked God to use her to save Kansas. She went in to the bars and singed hymns and prayed for the soul of the patrons.

In the late1890's the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) became very active with Carry in the lead. In 1899 and into 1900 Carry Nation and the WCTU developed a campaign of prayer and religious song outside local saloons. Carry was a tall and determined woman. Carry was first treated roughly and with contempt. She soon went on the offensive and she and her friends returned to the "joints" and in violent confrontations and the law backing her up, they succeeded in closing the saloons.
Carry was urged by people from other counties to "save their towns from saloons."
So, hearing a voice that told her to "go to Kiowa," She promptly did, on June 1, 1900, using stones and bricks wrapped in newspaper, she attacked three illegal saloons in Kiowa, Kansas.

The emotion that Carry Nation had stirred up helped her to broaden her campaign in to other cities. She went from stones and bricks to an iron rod, strapped to her cane, for destroying saloons.

On January 21, 1901, wearing her famous black dress and bonnet, carrying a Bible, her iron rod, and a hatchet, which became her trademark, she entered Wichita, Kansas. There she destroyed furniture and mirrors and attacked a picture of a nude woman in the famous Eaton hotel/saloon and the result was, she was kept in jail for five weeks. This was her most famous destruction she every accomplished.

In 1901 her husband, David, divorced her on grounds of desertion. He died in 1903 and is buried in the Highland Cemetery, Medicine Lodge, Kansas.

Carry's crusading progress was watch all across the nation with interest and growing sympathy. Even her enemies acknowledged her extraordinary methods of producing results. Her trip to New York City was ineffective, and during other raids in cities like San Francisco, California, to Washington, D.C., Carry Nation became a symbol of aggression rather than a temperance reform.

Between 1900 and 1910, Carry Nation was arrested 30 times and spent time in prison. The sale of pewter hatchet pins paid for Carry's numerous jail fines, also her lectures and publications earned money for her. She established a home for wives of alcoholics in Kansas City, Kansas.

By the time of her death, Carry Nation was alone and penniless. She died on June 9, 1911, in Leavenworth, Kansas. She is buried beside her mother in Belton, Missouri. She requested her tome stone to read. "She Hath Done What She Could."

David and Carry Nation's home in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, is now a museum. The house is open Monday through Saturday from 10:30 to 5:00 and Sunday afternoons. Admission is required. The home holds much of the original furniture and there is also a very large picture of Carry Nation on the wall as you enter the home.