Okla-homey
12/28/2006, 06:39 AM
December 28, 1900: Carry Nation attacks a Kansas saloon
http://aycu17.webshots.com/image/9136/2002115637767656644_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2002115637767656644)
On this day 106 years ago, convinced that her righteous campaign against alcohol (the ends) justified her aggressive tactics (her means), Carry Nation attacks a saloon in Wichita, Kansas, shattering a large mirror behind the bar and throwing rocks at a "titillating" painting of a nekkid bathing Cleopatra.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/5851/carryimage0034vh.jpg
How did this fascinating devout alcohol-hater get started? Methinks it all began in her childhood. In the mid 1840s, Carry's parents moved to Cass County, Missouri from their native Kentucky. Her dad, George Moore was an eccentric "loud hollerin' fellow." Her mother was noted for riding around the local countryside in a carriage with a purple robe and a crown of brass inset with pieces of colored glass. As the carriage traveled the country roads, it was led by a slave dressed in a red coat playing a trumpet. Mrs. Moore claimed she was Queen Victoria. :eek:
This couple had one child after moving to Missouri. Her name was Carry Amelia Moore. She would later be known as Carry Nation.
The Moore family moved to Texas for a few years, but returned to Missouri. A young Ohio man named Dr. Charlie Gloyd arrived and though he called himself "Doctor," he was not a physician or dentist -- he "practiced" some form of chiropractic something-or-other. Mostly, he "practiced" drinking heavily.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/6352/carrysm8nj.jpg
Carry and the "Doctor" married in 1867 and moved in with Charlie's parents in Holden, MO. However, Charlie drank so much he would routinely fall asleep. Carry stated "I learned drink causes much enmity between the sexes. Drinking men neglect their wives." Charlie was also a Freemason and would visit the lodge frequently -- mainly to drink. Charlie's neglect of Carry due to his drinking and association with the Masonic fraternity influenced the young woman.
A pregnant Carry left Dr. Gloyd and she returned home where she had a daughter. From the beginning it could be seen the daughter was "defective" (her word, to describe the child's mental illness). Carry blamed the condition on Charlie Gloyd's drinking and Masonic "devil-worship," and not on the family history of similar conditions. Dr. Gloyd died shortly after the birth.
The sad story of the delusional Carry continued to spiral. At Warrensburg, MO she met David Nation. He was a handsome man who ran a newspaper, was a Presbyterian preacher and had several children of his own, but was 20 years her elder. The marriage was not a happy one, largely due to differences in their religious beliefs, but they had children together.
http://aycu17.webshots.com/image/9136/2002177714281150600_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2002177714281150600)
Rev. David Nation
Eventually, the couple decided to try the hotel business and opened a small hotel near Warrensburg on the road to Independence, MO.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/7764/carrycoolcar22aq.gif
Carry in her prime
In 1884, while attending a local Methodist service, Carry Nation had a seizure. She declared it a religious experience and her obsession grew. At the hotel she would try to heal sick travelers by supernatural means. Records indicate she charged Jews half-price because Jesus was Jewish, and used charms to protect the hotel from fire.
Eventually, the Nation's decided to quit Missouri and moved to Medicine Lodge, Kansas around 1886.
Even though Kansas was technically "dry" there were places where liquor was served for "medicinal purposes." This is where the Carry Nation of history begins. Shortly after their arrival in Kansas, she began to harass these establishments by entering the building, falling to her knees, singing hymns and praying aloud at the top of her lungs. She would condemn each bar patron individually while loudly claiming he was neglecting his wife and children.
http://aycu17.webshots.com/image/9136/2002120910097280382_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2002120910097280382)
Gathering wives of many patrons, her group would kneel on the sidewalk outside the victim saloon, open their Bibles and pray for an end to the "Devil Rum." While an enormous pain in the keister for bar owners and bar patrons, Carry had not turned violent yet.
In her first violent episode in March of 1889, the "Nation gang" of women entered a Medicine Lodge, KS general store where she grabbed a barrel of whiskey and began to roll it into the street. She was temporarily stopped by the marshal, but her women companions overtook the lawman.
She rolled it into the street, called for an axe, but was handed a sledgehammer. Carry later stated
I struck with all my might and the whiskey flew into the air. Then we poured it out and set it afire. I fell on my knees and thanked God for the victory.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/884/carcoolpur26yg.jpg
Carry's leather purse, carried on most of her saloon attacks, is in the collection of the Kansas State Historical Society
The next town to feel the wrath was Kiowa, KS. Wrapping rocks and bricks in newspapers, she headed into town on June, 1, 1900. Ostensibly, she wrapped the projectiles so they would be less likely to severely injure a person if she accidentally hit one instead of the bar windows and barback mirrors she intended to destroy. See, Carry was a compassionate, thoughful whack-job.
After the episode in Kiowa, KS, Carry recounted she had experienced a "vision". "I saw perhaps a dozen or so creatures in the forms of men leaning toward the buggy as if against a rope which prevented them from coming nearer. Their faces were those of demons....". :eek:
In Kiowa she grabbed her wrapped items, stormed a saloon and began to throw them at anything that would break. Inspired by her success, Carry visited two more saloons breaking everything in sight including the front windows. At one saloon and with one projectile left, she hurled the rock at a large mirror which did not break. She ran to the billiard table, grabbed a ball and screamed "Thank God!" as she hurled the billiard ball and the mirror smashed.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/2661/kiowacarrynation9yz.jpg
The assault on three Kiowa bars reached the newspapers and Carry began to gain national fame. She began to travel between her saloon smash-ups and speak to temperance groups.
A big woman at six feet tall and 175 pounds, the hatchet-wielding, black wearing Nation was an intimidating sight. She relished chopping up barrels of whiskey, destroying expensive bar fixtures, and berating the stunned bar owners and patrons for their evil habits.
Nation reasoned that since the authorities refused to enforce Kansas laws against ordinary drinking and the sale of alcohol, it was the responsibility of moral citizens to take the law into their own hands and destroy not only the alcohol but also the saloons that sold it. Local law enforcement, however, often did not agree, and Nation was frequently jailed for her disturbances.
In the fall of 1900, Carry rolled in to Enterprise, KS where she broke into a saloon and smashed all the bottles of beer. With a number of local supportive women, they paraded down the street toward another saloon. There, Carry's little platoon of "whiskey whackers" encountered a group of women opposed to the idea (mainly because they were, you know, women who made their living in the rooms above saloons) and a battle began.
Carry was knocked down and badly beaten. Battered but not bowed, she continued her tornadic tirades against alcohol, alcohol sellers and drinkers.
In Topeka, later in that fall of 1900, she debuted her first hatchet. As she described the saloon incident "I ran behind the bar smashed the mirror and all the bottles behind it. I picked up the cash register and threw it down; then broke the faucets of the refrigerator, opened the door and cut the rubber tubes which conducted the beer. It began to fly all over the house."
As you've read at the outset of this installment, a couple days after Christmas 1900, she blew in to Wichita.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/857/carrypostrlg7yi.jpg
All the publicity attracted offers from sideshows and traveling circuses. She obtained an agent from New York who sent her on a speaking tour throughout the country. The audience went to see the "hatchet woman" rather than absorb her speeches against liquor and crooked politicians.
She toured the east coast, the middle west and finally England. While she would enter saloons and create havoc, Carry did little destructive persuading during this time. Even those limited engagements were probably at the request of her manager to heighten her visibility.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/3457/carypin2th.gif
Carrie souvenirs like this pin were popular and helped finance her campaign against evil alcohol
As her life winded down, she retired to the backwoods of Arkansas. She moved in 1911 to Leavenworth, KS when in ill health, she was brought by a nephew to the Evergreen Sanitarium at Maple Avenue and Limit Street. She died there on June 9, 1911 and is buried in Belton, Missouri. Her body was taken back to Cass County, Missouri and buried without a marker until 1924.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/8531/carrynation9pd.jpg
Carry Nation is buried in the Belton Cemetery in Belton, MO. The inscription on her marker says "Faithful to the Cause of Prohibition - She Hath Done What She Could".
Although Nation's campaign of saloon vandalism won her national fame, the immediate results were disappointing. She managed to pressure Kansas into enforcing its prohibition laws more aggressively, but when she died in 1911, most of the country still sanctioned the sale of alcohol.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/7627/carrytemperance1tk.jpg
Obviously, Carry wasn't alone in her disdain for alcohol. Temperance groups were gaining power all over America. They were almost entirely made up of women, especially those who had male relatives who were alcoholics. The most important group was the "Womens Christian Temperance Union."
Ironically, by the time the U.S. adopted prohibition in 1920, Nation was largely forgotten--but the hatchet-wielding Kansas reformer unquestionably helped lay the foundation for America's "noble experiment."
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/8583/insane7zo1gs.jpg
http://aycu17.webshots.com/image/9136/2002115637767656644_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2002115637767656644)
On this day 106 years ago, convinced that her righteous campaign against alcohol (the ends) justified her aggressive tactics (her means), Carry Nation attacks a saloon in Wichita, Kansas, shattering a large mirror behind the bar and throwing rocks at a "titillating" painting of a nekkid bathing Cleopatra.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/5851/carryimage0034vh.jpg
How did this fascinating devout alcohol-hater get started? Methinks it all began in her childhood. In the mid 1840s, Carry's parents moved to Cass County, Missouri from their native Kentucky. Her dad, George Moore was an eccentric "loud hollerin' fellow." Her mother was noted for riding around the local countryside in a carriage with a purple robe and a crown of brass inset with pieces of colored glass. As the carriage traveled the country roads, it was led by a slave dressed in a red coat playing a trumpet. Mrs. Moore claimed she was Queen Victoria. :eek:
This couple had one child after moving to Missouri. Her name was Carry Amelia Moore. She would later be known as Carry Nation.
The Moore family moved to Texas for a few years, but returned to Missouri. A young Ohio man named Dr. Charlie Gloyd arrived and though he called himself "Doctor," he was not a physician or dentist -- he "practiced" some form of chiropractic something-or-other. Mostly, he "practiced" drinking heavily.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/6352/carrysm8nj.jpg
Carry and the "Doctor" married in 1867 and moved in with Charlie's parents in Holden, MO. However, Charlie drank so much he would routinely fall asleep. Carry stated "I learned drink causes much enmity between the sexes. Drinking men neglect their wives." Charlie was also a Freemason and would visit the lodge frequently -- mainly to drink. Charlie's neglect of Carry due to his drinking and association with the Masonic fraternity influenced the young woman.
A pregnant Carry left Dr. Gloyd and she returned home where she had a daughter. From the beginning it could be seen the daughter was "defective" (her word, to describe the child's mental illness). Carry blamed the condition on Charlie Gloyd's drinking and Masonic "devil-worship," and not on the family history of similar conditions. Dr. Gloyd died shortly after the birth.
The sad story of the delusional Carry continued to spiral. At Warrensburg, MO she met David Nation. He was a handsome man who ran a newspaper, was a Presbyterian preacher and had several children of his own, but was 20 years her elder. The marriage was not a happy one, largely due to differences in their religious beliefs, but they had children together.
http://aycu17.webshots.com/image/9136/2002177714281150600_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2002177714281150600)
Rev. David Nation
Eventually, the couple decided to try the hotel business and opened a small hotel near Warrensburg on the road to Independence, MO.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/7764/carrycoolcar22aq.gif
Carry in her prime
In 1884, while attending a local Methodist service, Carry Nation had a seizure. She declared it a religious experience and her obsession grew. At the hotel she would try to heal sick travelers by supernatural means. Records indicate she charged Jews half-price because Jesus was Jewish, and used charms to protect the hotel from fire.
Eventually, the Nation's decided to quit Missouri and moved to Medicine Lodge, Kansas around 1886.
Even though Kansas was technically "dry" there were places where liquor was served for "medicinal purposes." This is where the Carry Nation of history begins. Shortly after their arrival in Kansas, she began to harass these establishments by entering the building, falling to her knees, singing hymns and praying aloud at the top of her lungs. She would condemn each bar patron individually while loudly claiming he was neglecting his wife and children.
http://aycu17.webshots.com/image/9136/2002120910097280382_rs.jpg (http://allyoucanupload.webshots.com/v/2002120910097280382)
Gathering wives of many patrons, her group would kneel on the sidewalk outside the victim saloon, open their Bibles and pray for an end to the "Devil Rum." While an enormous pain in the keister for bar owners and bar patrons, Carry had not turned violent yet.
In her first violent episode in March of 1889, the "Nation gang" of women entered a Medicine Lodge, KS general store where she grabbed a barrel of whiskey and began to roll it into the street. She was temporarily stopped by the marshal, but her women companions overtook the lawman.
She rolled it into the street, called for an axe, but was handed a sledgehammer. Carry later stated
I struck with all my might and the whiskey flew into the air. Then we poured it out and set it afire. I fell on my knees and thanked God for the victory.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/884/carcoolpur26yg.jpg
Carry's leather purse, carried on most of her saloon attacks, is in the collection of the Kansas State Historical Society
The next town to feel the wrath was Kiowa, KS. Wrapping rocks and bricks in newspapers, she headed into town on June, 1, 1900. Ostensibly, she wrapped the projectiles so they would be less likely to severely injure a person if she accidentally hit one instead of the bar windows and barback mirrors she intended to destroy. See, Carry was a compassionate, thoughful whack-job.
After the episode in Kiowa, KS, Carry recounted she had experienced a "vision". "I saw perhaps a dozen or so creatures in the forms of men leaning toward the buggy as if against a rope which prevented them from coming nearer. Their faces were those of demons....". :eek:
In Kiowa she grabbed her wrapped items, stormed a saloon and began to throw them at anything that would break. Inspired by her success, Carry visited two more saloons breaking everything in sight including the front windows. At one saloon and with one projectile left, she hurled the rock at a large mirror which did not break. She ran to the billiard table, grabbed a ball and screamed "Thank God!" as she hurled the billiard ball and the mirror smashed.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/2661/kiowacarrynation9yz.jpg
The assault on three Kiowa bars reached the newspapers and Carry began to gain national fame. She began to travel between her saloon smash-ups and speak to temperance groups.
A big woman at six feet tall and 175 pounds, the hatchet-wielding, black wearing Nation was an intimidating sight. She relished chopping up barrels of whiskey, destroying expensive bar fixtures, and berating the stunned bar owners and patrons for their evil habits.
Nation reasoned that since the authorities refused to enforce Kansas laws against ordinary drinking and the sale of alcohol, it was the responsibility of moral citizens to take the law into their own hands and destroy not only the alcohol but also the saloons that sold it. Local law enforcement, however, often did not agree, and Nation was frequently jailed for her disturbances.
In the fall of 1900, Carry rolled in to Enterprise, KS where she broke into a saloon and smashed all the bottles of beer. With a number of local supportive women, they paraded down the street toward another saloon. There, Carry's little platoon of "whiskey whackers" encountered a group of women opposed to the idea (mainly because they were, you know, women who made their living in the rooms above saloons) and a battle began.
Carry was knocked down and badly beaten. Battered but not bowed, she continued her tornadic tirades against alcohol, alcohol sellers and drinkers.
In Topeka, later in that fall of 1900, she debuted her first hatchet. As she described the saloon incident "I ran behind the bar smashed the mirror and all the bottles behind it. I picked up the cash register and threw it down; then broke the faucets of the refrigerator, opened the door and cut the rubber tubes which conducted the beer. It began to fly all over the house."
As you've read at the outset of this installment, a couple days after Christmas 1900, she blew in to Wichita.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/857/carrypostrlg7yi.jpg
All the publicity attracted offers from sideshows and traveling circuses. She obtained an agent from New York who sent her on a speaking tour throughout the country. The audience went to see the "hatchet woman" rather than absorb her speeches against liquor and crooked politicians.
She toured the east coast, the middle west and finally England. While she would enter saloons and create havoc, Carry did little destructive persuading during this time. Even those limited engagements were probably at the request of her manager to heighten her visibility.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/3457/carypin2th.gif
Carrie souvenirs like this pin were popular and helped finance her campaign against evil alcohol
As her life winded down, she retired to the backwoods of Arkansas. She moved in 1911 to Leavenworth, KS when in ill health, she was brought by a nephew to the Evergreen Sanitarium at Maple Avenue and Limit Street. She died there on June 9, 1911 and is buried in Belton, Missouri. Her body was taken back to Cass County, Missouri and buried without a marker until 1924.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/8531/carrynation9pd.jpg
Carry Nation is buried in the Belton Cemetery in Belton, MO. The inscription on her marker says "Faithful to the Cause of Prohibition - She Hath Done What She Could".
Although Nation's campaign of saloon vandalism won her national fame, the immediate results were disappointing. She managed to pressure Kansas into enforcing its prohibition laws more aggressively, but when she died in 1911, most of the country still sanctioned the sale of alcohol.
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/7627/carrytemperance1tk.jpg
Obviously, Carry wasn't alone in her disdain for alcohol. Temperance groups were gaining power all over America. They were almost entirely made up of women, especially those who had male relatives who were alcoholics. The most important group was the "Womens Christian Temperance Union."
Ironically, by the time the U.S. adopted prohibition in 1920, Nation was largely forgotten--but the hatchet-wielding Kansas reformer unquestionably helped lay the foundation for America's "noble experiment."
http://img463.imageshack.us/img463/8583/insane7zo1gs.jpg