Woman’s Christian Temperance Union: Nation, Carrie

Carrie Amelia Moore (1846–1911) was born in Kentucky but lived much of her early life in rural Missouri. In 1867, at age twenty-one, she married a doctor named Charles Gloyd, who turned out to be an alcoholic. Gloyd died in 1869, and Carrie married a journalist and lawyer named David A. Nation in 1874. After her husband became a preacher in 1889, the couple moved to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, where Carrie Nation founded a chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). Nation’s chapter of the WCTU used pressure tactics—praying and singing hymns loudly outside drinking establishments—to embarrass saloonkeepers, bartenders, and customers. These actions caused the saloons in Medicine Lodge to close, but they couldn’t keep people from patronizing liquor establishments in neighboring Kiowa, Kansas, which would not buckle to moral persuasion.