Feature Article on Carry Nation. Topic: WOMEN &
PEOPLE
Written by Jim Sayre in February,
1997
TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HAD ROOTS IN SHELBY COUNTY, OHIO |
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The November 1996 Victorian Evening at the home of the late Mr. and Mrs. William H.C. Goode (Sidney’s Greatstone Castle) gave local residents a glimpse of the genteel lifestyle of the late 19th century. The hostess for the evening, Mrs. Goode, charmingly portrayed by Sherrie Casad-Lodge, was the epitome of good taste and gracious manner, a credit to Victorian womanhood. Another Victorian lady, also with ties to Shelby County, was not such a gracious lady. This lady was a general of the anti-alcohol temperance movement, the famous 6-foot, 175-pound, hatchet-wielding, saloon-wrecking Carry Amelia Nation. The gentle Mrs. Goode, member of Sidney’s Methodist Church which sponsored temperance lectures and meetings, and the warring Mrs. Nation represent the multifaceted campaign in the late 1800’s against the abuses of alcohol in Shelby County, this state, and across the Nation. Oddly enough, the father-in-law of Carry Nation, that great anti-booze warrior, operated a tavern just west of Sidney in the tiny Cynthian Township hamlet of Newport. In Newport, Harry Gloyd, a one-time justice of the peace and tavern keeper, raised his son Charles. This Charles would develop into a full-blown alcoholic, wed the young Carry Moore, and die not long after she reluctantly, but quickly, divorced him. Much later, remarried to attorney and preacher David Nation and immersed in the fight against alcohol, Carry Nation would attribute her crusade to the horrors she experienced while married to Shelby County’s Charles Gloyd. "Whisky is a cruel tyrant and a worse evil," she said. Following Charles’ death in 1868, and feeling remorse for having left him, Carry blamed "the curse of drink and tobacco and the Masonic Order," where she believed Gloyd had done much of his drinking, according to Beals’ book Cyclone Carry. "Later, she would strike out against the snakes of evil she believed had destroyed him." Carry and her second husband, David Nation, settled in Medicine Lodge, Kansas, in the early 1890’s where she soon launched her historic, nationwide crusade against drinking. Using a hatchet to ruin saloons (she called it "hatchetations"), Carry 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. She would "appear at a saloon, berate the customers, and proceed to damage as much of the place as she could with her hatchet. She was the scourge of tavern owners and drinkers alike" (Compton’s Interactive Encyclopedia). |
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