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Feature Article on Carry Nation. Topic: WOMEN &
PEOPLE
Written by Jim Sayre in February,
1997
TEMPERANCE MOVEMENT HAD ROOTS IN SHELBY COUNTY, OHIO...Pg 8 |
| Charles was an avid reader and an excellent
student. He finished medical school before the Civil War. He was mustered into the 118th
Ohio Volunteer Infantry in September 1962 at age 22, serving as 1st lieutenant of Co. C.
Army life helped Charles overcome his boyhood abhorrence of alcohol when he found that
drinking helped him enjoy the company of fellow officers. "He was fighting to free
others from slavery, but he became a worse slave than those he sought to free," Carry
said of him (Beals). He was promoted to captain of Co. H within a few months and marched
with General Sherman through Georgia. The former Newport resident participated in the siege of Atlanta and was mustered out of
service in June 1865 in Salisbury, North Carolina. Charles and Carry met in late 1865
when he applied to her father for a temporary teaching position to tide him over until he
set up a medical practice. Carry’s family was living again in Cass County, Missouri,
having failed at farming in Texas. Her father, knowing of Charles’ drinking,
discouraged the budding romance, but it continued in secret for two years. It was on her
wedding day in 1867, just before her 21st birthday, that she first saw him drunk. "He
was very intoxicated and mumbled the words of the ceremony, head bowed. This day, which
she had looked forward to as the happiest in her life, was dark and dreadful," says
Beals. Gloyd had already moved his parents from Shelby County to Missouri before the
wedding. Harry Gloyd impressed Carry as a "fine frosty gentleman, but bedridden. Mrs.
Gloyd was a typical New England housewife, competent and self-righteous" (Beals).
Gloyd continued to drink after the marriage and his medical practice declined through
neglect. He was unable to support his growing family for, by now, Carry was pregnant.
"Pet, if you leave me, I’ll be a dead man inside six months," Charles Gloyd
said when Carry finally decided to leave him for good (Beals). Gloyd had often promised
Carry that he would end his drinking and he had failed. But he made good on his promise of
death. Charles’ final breath at age 28 came within four months of his father’s
death in 1868 and just a few months after the birth of a daughter he had never seen. Mrs.
Gloyd became a member of Carry’s household after the death of her husband and son.
In the mid-1870’s, Nancy Gloyd’s earlier hotel
experience back in Newport paid off when Carry and David Nation were living on the
economic edge in Texas. "Mother Gloyd had once run a hotel and had suggested that
might be a solution for their troubles," according to Beals. They bought an old,
rundown hotel, where Carry cooked, waited on tables, and did the laundry while Mother
Gloyd, still living under the future temperance leader’s care years after her son
Charles’ death, did the chamber work. Nancy Gloyd remained with Carry until the
early 1890’s when the Nations moved to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, where Carry was to
launch her hatchet-swinging forays to punish saloonkeepers, first in Kansas, then
throughout the country. Smashing saloons, publishing anti-drinking newsletters, and
lecturing frequently on the evils of alcohol kept Carry very busy. In 1901, husband David
Nation divorced her for desertion. Illness eventually curtailed her activities and she
died in 1911.
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