March 2011 MAINE COASTAL NEWS Page 23.
Carry Nation and the Steamer CALVIN AUSTIN
By Amos Boyd
Carry Nation who became famous for her liquor draining and bottle smashing attacks on saloons in the early 1900s, was born Carry Moore in Kentucky on November 25, 1846. Her father was responsible for the unusual spelling of her first name, which remained as he spelled it when he registered her birth. Her mother was mentally weak and spent hours dressing up, and at times thought she was Queen Victoria. Her father was a prosperous stock dealer, planter and slave holder before the Civil War. Carry was fifteen years old when the war began, and her father lost his money when the war ended. Carry was then twenty years old and had attended a state normal school and received a certificate to teach.
Shortly before her twenty-first birthday, Carry married her first love, a young Union veteran and doctor, Charles Gloyd. He was already an alcoholic, and marriage did not change his ways. He continued drinking and smoking and spent his time and money in saloons and fraternal lodges, returning home night after night penniless, sodden with drink, smelling of booze and tobacco. Carry left him after a few months, she was already pregnant and her child was born physically weak and mentally retarded. Carry supported her mother and her retarded daughter by teaching school. She never forgot what she had learned from her tragic marriage; a hate for saloons, fraternal orders, and smoking. Her husband died drunk and penniless.
Ten years later Carry married David Nation, whose name she bore for the rest of her life. He was nearly ten years older, and intelligent but impractical man who never did succeed as lawyer, editor, or minister. Only by the most arduous labor did she manage to support the family. They moved and fought constantly, and while David Nation was acting as a minister, Carry became chairman of the W.C.T.U. (Women’s Christian Temperance Union) at Medicine Lodge in Kansas. Carry took on the responsibility of being chairman with grim determination. Kansas was officially and legally “dry” but was actually being flooded with booze in saloons, which were often called “joints”. Soon, Carry and a few other women of the W.C.T.U. campaigned to get rid of the saloons, writing many letters to the governor and other officials, which were always ignored. Carry then turned to prayer, asking for help from a Higher Authority. After a time, a voice told her to go to a “joint” in Kiowa, the wettest town in the county, and take something with her to throw and to smash. Early the next morning, feeling divinely inspired, Carry gathered rocks and bricks from her back yard and loaded them into her buggy. Then she carefully tied on her bonnet, hitched up the horse, and drove to Kiowa. It was still early when she arrived at Dobson’s joint, where she balanced bricks
under one arm while she opened the door with the other. The few bleary-eyed men drooping at the bar stared at her; it was not the custom for women to enter saloons. Carry was formidable size, six feet tall and of substantial girth, and weighed 175 pounds. They did not have time to stare before Carry’s first brick struck the large expensive mirror behind them. The mirror shattered, making a great crashing racket, sending glass in all directions, which encouraged Carry to further destruction. With an arm strong from hard work, and a remarkable aim for a woman, her next brick brought down a stack of shining glasses and three bottles of expensive liquor.
No man stood in Carry’s way. The men who had been sitting at the bar were the first to leave, and they departed with remarkable speed considering their condition. The others scattered in all directions, diving through the nearest doors yelling for the police. Carry continued her assault until the joint was a shambles of broken glass and the air was filled with the moist and pungent odor of spilled liquor. She has been exhilarated by her success, but she was also tired, and as she was leaving the saloon, she paused for a moment to straighten her bonnet before returning to her buggy. There Carry found two unused bricks which she felt should not be wasted, so she returned to Dobson’s where she smashed his large front plate- glass windows.
Carry continued her attacks on saloons, though she found rocks and bricks heavy and not always available. Soon she learned that her umbrella was an efficient weapon that extended her already impressive reach. When she attacked a well-known and expensive saloon in a Wichita hotel, she used a small hatchet for the first time, and her great strength caused thousands of dollars of damage. The hatchet then became her symbol and the sale of miniature hatchets helped to pay her many fines and often helped to get her out of jail.
In time Carry became something of a celebrity, and her name became a household word throughout the United States. Her war, she said, was against the makers of widows and orphans. She attracted many followers and imitators in Kansas and elsewhere, who sometimes alone, and sometimes in what they called “Flying Squadrons” appeared suddenly and swooped down on liquor selling joints. Then the women disappeared, only to re-appear miles away leaving devastation in their wake.
Carry continued her own attacks on saloons, and with her umbrella, sharpened hatchet, bricks, stones, and an iron rod, wrought a terrible vengeance upon saloon owners. She was arrested many times, and was often in real danger. She had been shot at and clubbed, and was often harassed. In
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