Nation, Carry

Nation, Carry (Amelia)

 orig. Carry Moore

Carry Nation.

(credit: Brown Brothers)

(born Nov. 25, 1846, Garrard county, Ky., U.S.—died June 9, 1911, Leavenworth, Kan.) U.S. temperance advocate. Though she held a teaching certificate, her education was intermittent. In 1867 she married a young physician but soon left him because of his alcoholism. In 1877 she married David Nation, a lawyer, who would divorce her for desertion in 1901. After a 1890 U.S. Supreme Court decision weakened the prohibition laws of Kansas, where she was living, she joined the temperance movement; she came to believe that the unlawfulness of saloons meant they could be destroyed with impunity. A tall and heavy woman, she would march alone or with hymn-singing supporters into saloons and sing, pray, and shout while she smashed their fixtures and stock with a hatchet. Jailed many times, she paid her fines with proceeds from her lectures and sales of souvenir hatchets.

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Nation, Carry (Amelia b. Moore) (1846–1911) temperance reformer; born in Garrard County, Ky. Her alcoholic first husband left her with an abiding hatred for liquor and saloons. She conducted a series of hatchet-swinging, saloon-smashing missions in Kansas and in large cities throughout the country. She was arrested 30 times before her retirement due to poor health. Even supporters of the temperance movement found her a difficult person.

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Nation, Carry

(Amelia Moore) (1846–1911) hatchet-wielding saloon wrecker. [Am. Hist.: Flexner, 253]

See : Temperance