Carrie Nation

Carrie Nation (1846-1911), American temperance leader, born Carry Amelia Moore in Garrard County, Kentucky. She was raised and educated in various parts of Kentucky, Missouri, and Texas. At the age of 21 she married Dr. Charles Gloyd, an alcoholic. Her efforts to reform him failed, and he died shortly after their marriage. She subsequently taught school and, in 1877, married David Nation, a minister and lawyer.

The couple settled in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, where she responded to what she considered a divine calling to destroy saloons. Nearly 1.8 m (nearly 6 ft) tall and dressed as deaconess, Nation was an imposing figure who gained national renown for her radical opposition to alcohol. After three years of delivering lectures and public prayers, she began, in Wichita, Kansas, to use a hatchet to ruin saloons, describing her havoc-wreaking calls as “hatchetations.” She believed in divine guidance, and that her name (Carry A. Nation) had been preordained. Continuing her crusade in many American cities, she was arrested 30 times for disturbing the peace. Proceeds from her lectures and her sales of souvenir hatchets paid for her bail and fines. She also published newsletters called the Smasher's Mail, the Hatchet, and the Home Defender, which helped pay for a home for wives of alcoholics in Kansas City, Kansas. In 1901 her husband divorced her for desertion. Her memoirs, The Use and Need of the Life of Carry Nation, appeared in 1904.