Carrie was a tank of a woman. Standing at 6 feet tall and weighing in at 175 pounds, she described herself as a bulldog, running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he didn't like.
Carrie was born under some pretty piss poor conditions. Her father was a hard luck man who failed at every business he tried, and her mother was a woman who loved finery and social airs, but suffered from delusions that often times left her convinced that she was Queen Victoria. Due to these two familial quirks, the family moved constantly throughout Carrie's childhood, leaving little time for formal education. What little schooling Carrie did get came from random books she managed to get her hands on and the family bible. After the Civil War, Carrie fell in love with a young physician named Charles Gloyd, who, as luck would have it, happened to be a severe alcoholic. Carrie's parents did not like the match, what with Gloyd being a drunk and all, but Carrie was smitten. Gloyd unsurprisingly died a little over a year later, his liver pickled the maximum amount possible. Carrie, unfazed, used his estate to build herself a nice little home and get her teaching license.
At age 28, Carrie got remarried to a minister and attorney 19 years her senior named David Nation. The couple lived in Texas for a time until David got involved in local politics, by which I mean several of the local politicians murdered each other. Not holding his beliefs that tightly, David and Carrie then moved to Kansas where David made a pittance working as a minister and Carrie made good money running a hotel. However, the hotel apparently didn't take up enough of Carrie's time for she soon founded a local temperance movement. At the time, due to the prevalence of drunken cowboys, Kansas had banned the sale of booze, but the law wasn't really being enforced and saloons operated openly. Carrie, a woman of action, spent her time off going to bars and singing hymns to the drunks, which unsurprisingly had little effect.
After nine frustrating years of hymn singing, Carrie, now a woman of 54, had a bit of a revelation, or perhaps a breakdown. Convinced that God had given her a divine order in a dream, she collected a big pile of rocks, took them to a saloon, and smashed all the liquor bottles. After destroying two more saloons in a similar fashion a tornado struck Kansas, which Carrie took to be a thumbs up from the man upstairs. More raids followed, after which her husband David sarcastically suggested that a hatchet would be more effective. Carrie, believing it to be the first sensible advice the man had ever given her, divorced her husband and then bought herself a hatchet. With her new weapon in hand, Carrie began a reign of terror across the country, smashing taverns wherever she found them. She was arrested and fined numerous times, but was unapologetic. The fines were paid off using money she earned doing speaking engagements, autographing pictures of herself, and selling souvenir hatchets to her many admirers.
Carrie Nation became big business to the point where she trademarked her own name. When President McKinley was shot, Carrie, believing him to be a secret drunk, applauded the act because drinkers get what they deserve. As her fame grew a vaudeville group, for god only knows what reason, convinced her to join them on a tour to England. Carrie, evidently not understanding what vaudeville was, spent her time on stage giving sermons on the evil of drink, which were rebutted with eggs thrown by the audience. It didn’t take long for Carrie to understand that she was being treated as some type of joke, so she ripped up her contract and went back to the American speaking circuit. In the middle of one of these lectures she collapsed on stage and died at the age of 64.
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