Carry A. Nation
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Carry A. Nation & Family |
In 1900 Carry Nation began attacking Kansas saloons, first with a mallet and then with a hatchet. Her speaking tours throughout the United States as well as Scotland and England made her the most celebrated anti-alcohol activist.
Children invented games in which boys would build "saloon forts" and girls would launch assaults with sticks and stones. The Women's Christian Temperance Union, however, viewed her as overly controversial and disavowed her tactics.
Nation's forays into Arkansas were generally well-received, although she was arrested during a 1906 trip to Hot Springs after entering a bar and lecturing the patrons. In 1908 she purchased a farm and cabin outside of Eureka Springs as a retirement haven. "The water is the purest, the scenery is not surpassed, and the mountain air is life-giving... I believe the mountains of the Ozarks to be the future health resorts of this country." The following year she moved into a large house on Steele Street in Eureka Springs.
Christened "Hatchet Hall," the house became a rescue mission for battered women, a school, and a rest home for the elderly. In January 1911 Carry Nation collapsed while addressing a Eureka Springs audience, muttering before she fell, "I have done what I could." She remained bedridden before dying six months later.
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Carry A. Nation Home Defender, Carry A. Nation's fabled hatchet |
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