The ‘Kansas smasher’ made several stops in Fort Worth in her campaign against alcohol.

She passed through Fort Worth at least four times during her dozen years on the national stage. And although she kept her hatchet holstered while in Cowtown, Carry Nation’s tongue could chop down a drunkard at his knees.

Caroline Amelia Moore was born in Kentucky in 1846.

In 1867 she married Charles Gloyd, a physician. Their marriage was short but would set the trajectory for Carry’s life. Gloyd was an alcoholic. Carry became a vehement opponent of alcohol.

In 1874, she married David A. Nation, a newspaperman and minister. In 1889, they moved to Medicine Lodge, Kansas, where Carry founded a branch of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union and campaigned for enforcement of Kansas’ law banning the sale of liquor.

In the beginning, Carry’s demonstrations against strong drink were subdued: She would enter a saloon, pray and sing hymns as the patrons (all men) drank. Then she began to scold saloon keepers with barbed greetings such as, “Good morning, destroyer of men’s souls.”

But after she experienced what she deemed a divine vision in 1900, Nation and her disciples began to attack saloons with brick bats and rocks — she called such missiles “smashers.”

Then Nation and company escalated to hatchets. She called her attacks on saloons “hatchetations.”

By the time Carry Nation came to Cowtown in November 1904, she carried a Bible, not a hatchet, but she remained “good copy” for newspapers.

The Telegram wrote of her Nov. 16 visit:

“She visited several saloons and told the men behind the bar, ‘You are selling hell broth and ruining the homes.’ In several places the men replied that she had better attend to her own business and get out, and others she was permitted to argue the matter from her standpoint.

“The crowd following her kept getting larger and larger in evident anticipation that she would break a saloon or two, but she failed to perform.

“Mrs. Nation ... did not hesitate to tell those present of the crimes they were permitting by allowing the liquor and cigarette habits to prevail ... She blames 75 percent of the criminals of the country for their downfall to these two curses.”

She was back in town on Nov. 28.

The Telegram wrote:

“Carry A. Nation, the Kansas smasher, who has made a tour of this country and has created a national sensation by her war on the liquor traffic, walked into the office of the editor of the Telegram this morning and asked, ‘Where is the editor?’”

After the editor introduced himself to her, she pointed to a portrait of President Theodore Roosevelt on the wall.

“‘What are you doing with Roosevelt’s picture in here?’ she asked.

“‘Why, that is the picture of the president — our president — the president of the people of this country,’ explained the editor.

“‘No, he is not,’ she shouted. ‘He is the president of the brewers, the distillers, and the trusts. The brewers and the distillers and the trusts are opposed to the interests of the people. They have endorsed Mr. Roosevelt. Carry Nation, the Home Defender, is against a man who is endorsed by the brewers, the distillers, and the trusts.’

“Mrs. Nation at this juncture espied a sack of tobacco on the desk. She emptied it upon the floor, saying tobacco is hurtful and should not be used. She saw a cigarette on the desk, and this she cast away, saying it is degrading to smoke cigarettes ...”

In 1906, she lectured — twice — at Sam Rosen’s White City trolley park on the North Side. One lecture was “for men only.”

By 1910, Carry Nation had been arrested more than 30 times. That year she was back in Cowtown on May 19 — the day the Earth passed through the tail of Halley’s Comet.

As always when she arrived in a town, people followed her every step. Two of those people on May 19 were reporters for the Star-Telegram and Record.

The Star-Telegram wrote:

“Like Halley’s comet, Carry Nation came and went. And she was just about as effective. No saloon licenses have been revoked. No bartenders have resigned their jobs. Cocktails are still concocted, and fizzes are still fizzing.

“Mrs. Nation spent two and a half hours in Fort Worth Thursday afternoon. She ‘bawled out’ a bartender at Thirteenth and Main streets [in Hell’s Half Acre]. She drew the attention of cigarette fiends to their ‘criminal vice.’ But that’s all. The hatchet remained unhatched, and the saloons continued to pass drinks across the bar.

“‘Look at that cigarette fiend,’ she said as she walked up Main Street from the Union Depot. ‘The vile villain is puffing out tobacco smoke, and the smoke is blown back here. Do you realize that that is an insult? It is.’

“A saloon was passed just then.

“‘My heart cries to me to go in and smash it. The saloon is the bar to heaven and the door to hell. Fort Worth is a great city. There are lots of good people here, but it is the worst cigarette smoking town in the country ... Don’t you know, young man, that the cigarette is the instrument of the devil? There’s one now. I’m going to put my heel on it. I crush the things just as I would crush the head of a snake.’”

Passing a Main Street billiard hall, she yelled into the open door: “Look at that, a pool hall: the devil’s setting hen, hatching out vagrants, gamblers, and vice.”

“A pile of champagne bottles caught her eye as they nestled against the glass in the show window of a wholesale liquor house.

“‘Ugh,’ she shuddered, ‘It makes me want to smash things.’ Then calling into the door of the place she yelled: ‘Den of murderers, murderers of home and peace,’ and hurried on.”

Thirteen months later Carry Nation died where it all had begun in 1900 — Kansas. She was 64.

Her tombstone — erected by the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union — reads “Faithful to the cause of prohibition. She hath done what she could.”

Mike Nichols blogs about Fort Worth history at www.hometownbyhandlebar.com.