Birth Dates of Notable Kentuckians: November 25, 1846 - Carry Nation

  

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From The Kentucky Encyclopedia -
Carry Amelia (Moore) Nation, temperance crusader, was born on November 25, 1846, in Garrard County, Kentucky, to George and Mary (Campbell) Moore. Her father was a planter and livestock dealer. Her mother, who was mentally ill, was often under the delusion that she was Queen Victoria. Between 1851 and 1865 the family lived in Boyle and Woodford counties, Kentucky; Grayson County, Texas; and Belton, Missouri. Ill health curtailed Carry's formal education.

Carry Moore married Dr. Charles Gloyd, a Missouri physician, in 1867. She left Gloyd, an alcoholic, several months later and returned to her parents' home, where she gave birth to a daughter, Charlien. Gloyd died within six months of her departure. Having earned a teaching certificate from the Normal Institute in Warrensburg, Missouri, Carry taught school. In 1877, after losing her teaching position, she married David Nation, lawyer, journalist, and minister. In the early 1890s the Nations moved to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, where he practiced law and she campaigned with a religious fervor against drinking. After her second marriage ended in divorce, Carry Nation developed a branch of the Women's Christian Temperance Union to rid Kansas of saloons. Kansas had outlawed alcohol, but liquor was sold by many establishments there. In June 1900 Nation used bricks to wreck a saloon in Kiowa, Kansas, and a hatchet later became her weapon in traveling throughout the United States to destroy drinking places. She was often imprisoned for "hatchetation" (her own term).

Nation lectured extensively in the United States and abroad. She was concerned with equal rights for women, the plight of the homeless, sex education, and the evils of tobacco. In July 1904 she was attacked by an irate bar owner in Elizabethtown, Kentucky , after a temperance lecture she had delivered. The police who saw the incident failed to arrest her assailant. Nation last wrecked a bar, Mrs. Maloy's Dance Hall and Cafe, in Butte, Montana, on January 26, 1910. She retired to a farm in Boone County, Arkansas, and died in Leavenworth, Kansas, on June 9, 1911. She was buried in a family cemetery in Belton, Missouri.

LISE SMITH-PETERS , Entry Author

Selected Sources from UK Libraries:

Nation, Carry Amelia. The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation. Rev. Ed. Twenty-five Thousand.. ed. Topeka: F.M. Steves & Sons, 1905. Print.
B N213u 1905, Special Collections Research Center - Biography Collection

Nation, Carry Amelia. The Hatchet. Print.
178.05 H283, Special Collections Research Center