...Here comes Carry with a brand new hatchet.
Carry Nation wasn't dangerous when she lived in Holden and then in Warrensburg. That was way before her temperance days.
She was born in Garrard Couty, Kentucky Nov. 25, 1846, but her parents moved six miles north of Harisonville in Cass County when she was young. Her mother, who believed she was Queen Victoria of England, insisted on seeing her family by appointment only and wandered about the house looking for her septer. Later in life, Carry's mother was committed to a state mental institution in Missouri where she died in 1893. Carry also had an aunt who, during certain lunar phases, clambered up on the roof to be a weather vane, and a cousin who at the age of forty unexpectedly returned to all fours.
She married a drunkard named Dr. Charles Gloyd in 1867 and moved with him to Holden, Mo. Dr. Gloyd was also an excessive smoker and a Mason. Her years with him turned her against drinking, smoking, fraternal societies, corsets, short skirts, and foreign foods.
The Gloyds had a daughter, Charlien. When Charlien was young something appeared on her jaw that ate her flesh so that some of her teeth could be seen through the hole. She later suffered from lock jaw and they removed some of her teeth ii order to get a tube in to feed her
After Dr. Gloyd died, Carrty moved to 500 N. Holden in Warrensburg where she attended the Normal. A few months after getting her teaching certificate, she married David Nation a lawyer and a fluent writer who had once been editor of the Holden Enterprise.
He came to Holden at the close of the Civil War and served as the City Attorney there from 1868 to 1870.
Then he moved to Warrensburg, where he partnered with Allen H. Cruse in the law office of Nation & Cruse. Later he bacame part owner and editor of the Warrensburg Journal Democrat.
The rival (Republican) newspaper, the Standard Herald was very critical of him. In1875, the Standard Herald had this to say about him,
"We have branded him publicly to his face, as a liar and a dirty dog... He is a coward and a poltroon. His reputation for truth, and his general character is so infamous all over Johnson county, but particularly in Holden and Warrensburg, that it is a waste of time and space to repeat these things and we now DROP HIM."
Back then Republicans and Democrats didn't get along very well. In fact, they got along so poorly that the Standard Herald either hired a boy to throw a copy of their paper at the rival editor or they wrote a tongue-in-cheek, humorous article claiming that they did.
Nation Assassinated
It was about dusk, Friday evening. Nation was standing at the foot of the Journal stairs... The boy could be seen coming in, and coming out of the shadows, as he stealthily approached his unsuspecting victim. All at once the boy ran his hand in his pocket and with lightning like rapidity produced, and with unerring aim sent a Standard straight between his victim's eyes. He fell and a long low moan came from his lips, and as he was passing away he said:
'Farewell, a long farewell to all my greatness!...'
"At this moment a loud cry rent the air, and Judge Middleton was bending over his beloved chief, 'Them Standard men done it, and now what'll become of the Journal?' and he sat down and smoked his pipe."
Mr. Nation wasn't really killed. In fact, he lived on to marry Carry two years later.
David was nineteen years older than Carry when he married her in 1877. After the wedding, she taught in Holden schools for about four years.
The Nations moved to Texas and then to Kansas where they had a lot of other interesting adventures especially with the Temperance movement. If you would like to read about them, go to the Historical Society Gift shop and buy the booklet pictured above by Mary L. Rainey. It's worth the price
