Memory of Demon Rum Fighter Lives On

For the life of him, Weldon Jackson can’t quite figure out why people are so curious about Carry Nation, the hatchet-wielding crusader against Demon Rum at the turn of the century.

Visitors to the Belton Museum show more interest in exhibits about the life of Nation, who is buried in the town cemetery, than others featuring native son Dale Carnegie and one-time resident Harry S. Truman, he says.

“Strangers ask about Carry Nation 3 to 1 over Dale Carnegie,” says Jackson, president of the Belton Historical Society.

“It’s kind of hard to understand, because Carry wasn’t even born here and Dale Carnegie was. Truman farmed in the area before he entered politics and came to Belton to do his business and joined the Masonic Lodge here.”

For a decade preceding Prohibition, Nation, the original Mother Against Drunk Driving, railed against the evils of alcohol and tobacco with a Bible in one hand and her trademark hatchet in the other.

Unfortunately, Nation was born too soon to take heed of Carnegie’s best seller, “How to Win Friends and Influence People.” Using iron rods, rocks and axes, Nation and her followers ransacked a number of saloons, most of them in Kansas, where laws prohibiting liquor rarely were enforced.

Carry Nation became a household name in 1900 after a rock-throwing assault inside the Carey Hotel bar in Wichita, which she described as “one of the most lawless places in Kansas.”

Nation was a tall, imposing woman who favored an alpaca dress, black cotton stockings, heavy square-toed shoes, black bonnet and navy blue cape. Her first husband’s death from alcoholism in 1867, one year after their marriage, helped launch her on her temperance crusade.

So determined was Nation to set the country on the proper moral path that she changed her name from Carrie to Carry--to become Carry A. Nation.

Although she was born in Garrard County, Ky., Nation’s ties to Missouri are strong. When she was 9, her family moved to a farm near Belton, then a village of 900 people but now a Kansas City suburb of 15,000.

Nation attended the Normal Institute in Warrensburg and taught in a public school in Holden. In 1889, she and her second husband, David Nation, a minister and lawyer, settled in Medicine Lodge, Kan., which became the base for her anti-alcohol campaign.

She eventually resorted to violence, entering establishments, destroying stocks of liquor and wrecking furniture with iron bars or stones. Extending her activities to other cities in Kansas, she first used a hatchet, which became her symbol, while wrecking a saloon in Wichita in 1901. In that year her husband divorced her for desertion.

Her “hatchetations” of “joints” as she called them eventually took her to cities across the United States and to Mexico, Canada, England and Scotland. She was arrested about 30 times.

Jackson, of the historical society, a spry 82-year-old retired banker, grew up on a farm near Belton and knew some of Nation’s relatives who lived in the area.

“They didn’t think too much of her,” said Jackson, who was 3 when Carry Nation died in 1911 at age 64. “Her name came up very little until she became famous--or infamous,”

Nation lectured, spoke between acts at carnivals and sold souvenir hatchets, making enough money to pay her fines and build a home for drunks in Kansas City.

She was given to mystic seizures and appears to have suffered from hereditary paranoia. Her mother was a psychotic who believed herself to be Queen Victoria.

While her greatest wrath was directed toward alcohol, she also railed against such things as corsets, shortened skirts and smoking.

While there were few immediate results of her bar raids, she helped create the climate of public opinion that led to Prohibition in 1920.

Her final words before collapsing in Eureka Springs, Ark., during what would be her last speech: “I have done what I could.”

At her request, Nation was buried near her parents in the Belton cemetery. The granite monument reads: “She hath done what she could.”

Local legend has it that Nation forced the closure of a Belton tavern called the Right Way, but she wouldn’t find a single bar to trash in the city today.

There are a handful of package liquor stores, convenience stores that sell beer and a few restaurants that serve alcohol with meals. But no true bars, no Carry’s Place.

Is the wrath of Carry Nation still felt in Belton, 79 years after her death?

“Carry Nation doesn’t have anything to do with it,” grumbled the owner of a package liquor store not far from the red brick museum where the crusader’s exploits are chronicled. “This is a strong Baptist town, and they don’t want bars here.”

Several years ago, a civic group tried to organize a Carry Nation Day celebration. A beer garden was to be included, but community leaders said no and the event never was held.