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Carrie Nation Visits the Friendly City

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As we are so often reminded, Wheeling was once a wide open city, chock-full of businesses eager to supply the robust demand for the vices most popular with working men: primarily beer, tobacco, gambling, and prostitutes. At the dawn of the 20th century, hundreds of saloons lined Main and Market Streets, all of whose bars were lined with brass spittoons.

Into this den of iniquity descended the famous (or infamous) temperance and anti-tobacco activist from Kansas, Carrie Amelia Nation, who visited Wheeling in early October, 1901.

A physically imposing woman whose first husband ‘died of the drink,’ inspiring a lifelong crusade, the “Kansas Joint Smasher,” was best known for smashing saloons and “grog shops” with a hatchet.

Carrie Nation spoke on October 6 at the state fairgrounds on Wheeling Island after promising to “regulate the wickedest city in the south.”

The railroads took advantage of the national celebrity of the “Apostle of the hatchet,” advertising her visit and offering special “Carrie Nation Excursions” to bring “immense crowds” to Wheeling from Pittsburgh and Washington, PA, via the B & O, and from Cleveland and Canton, OH, via the Wheeling and Lake Erie. For its part, the trolley car line from Moundsville lowered its roundtrip rate to 25 cents.

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An Unmerciful Roasting

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En route to her hotel after a second lecture at the First Christian Church (where she accused the city’s wealthy brewers and saloon men of “making their money at the expense of the home”), Mrs. Nation made a stop to carry out her promised “active campaign.” Contractually bound to avoid smashing, she nevertheless refused to pass a saloon without at least a word or two.

Accordingly, she pushed her way into The Senate saloon on the corner of 16th and Market, and was followed by as many of the 300 hundred mostly women followers (members of the “Home Defender Club”) who could squeeze into the saloon’s two entrances. Once inside, she admonished the bartenders to “mend their ways” lest they be damned to hell. Police officer O’Leary, who had been tasked with keeping an eye on Mrs. Nation, followed her into The Senate where he confronted her, accusing her of disturbing the peace and ordering her to return to her hotel. She refused and was arrested, charged with “inciting a riot” and violating a city ordinance that prohibited “loud cries on the Sabbath Day.”

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[The Senate Saloon stood, ca. 1903~1914, on 16th and Market where WVNCC’s Barnes and Noble/Starbucks store is now. Harry L. Wheat was the proprietor. It’s the building with the Pabst sign in the above 1907 flood image from the William O’Leary Real Photo Postcard Collection of the Ohio County Public Library Archives.]

At the police station, Mrs. Nation “roasted Chief Ritz and Lieut. O’Leary unmercifully,” then fell asleep on a sofa. Meanwhile, Mayor Sweeney was immediately called and, in a highly unusual move, a trial was promptly convened at midnight.

A transcript of this rather odd and impromptu “special session of the police court” was included verbatim in the Intelligencer on October 8. O’Leary testified that members of Nation’s entourage were “shouting and hooting and acting in a disorderly manner.” He further alleged that Mrs. Nation was “making loud remarks on tobacco chewing and designated the saloons as hell holes.” Another witness testified that he heard Mrs. Nation say to O’Leary that “he ought to take that chew of tobacco out of his mouth and wash it out with lye.” Representing herself, Mrs. Nation complained that she hadn’t been permitted to call her own witnesses for the defense. The Senate bartenders accused Mrs. Nation of threatening to “close down this hell joint” and “whooping and hollering like someone that was drunk” (the irony of this remark caused laughter in the courtroom). A “wordy war” then ensued among Mayor Sweeney, Solicitor Coniff, and Mrs. Nation. The latter testified that she rarely passed a saloon without rebuking the men inside. She felt it was her Christian duty to warn them that “hell is being prepared for them; that they are anarchists; [and] that there is no law that will protect them…” Mrs. Nation said “she had counseled the women of Wheeling to smash the saloons, and save their husbands and sons from ruin.” Coniff countered that she should stay out of the saloons where she could do no good and only bring violence to herself and her women followers. Mayor Sweeney accused her of desecrating the Sabbath by lecturing for an admission fee, which he called “a purely mercenary transaction.” He added that Wheeling felt “insulted and imposed upon” by her actions. Mrs. Nation was fined $20 and sentenced to thirty days in jail. Refusing to pay bond, she spent the night in the county jail, vowing an appeal.

As the Intelligencer reported a couple of days later, the spectacle of the police, mayor, and city solicitor severely lecturing an “old woman” (Nation was 54 at the time) at midnight did not sit well with a lot of Wheeling citizens who had read the account. She was released from jail after 18 hours. On her way back to her hotel she reportedly opened the doors of a number of saloons on Market Street, shouting, “Come out of there you men! Don’t you know you are going straight to Hell?”

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But Was Wheeling the Wickedest?

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While she was being interviewed later in her room at the McLure, the reporter asked, “Is Wheeling as bad as you have been told it was?”

“Yes,” she replied. “Wheeling is rum soaked. I never saw so much spit on the streets as here in your town, showing so much tobacco used. Ladies cannot walk along the streets on account of the spit…Shame! Shame!! Shame!!”

Meet Carrie Nation in Wheeling This Friday! Want to see notorious bootlegger “Big Bill Lias” and hatchet-wielding temperance advocate “Carrie the ‘Apostle of the Hatchet’ Nation” do battle in the flesh? Join us at the Francis Pier-Pint Historic Brew-Off: Prohibition Edition this Friday, August 16, 2019 at 5:30 at River City. History and hops will take center stage at the Francis Pier-Pint Historic Brew-Off: Prohibition Edition. The event, which takes guests back to prohibition-era Wheeling, is part beer tasting, part trivia, part interactive history. Big Bill Lias vs Carrie The Kansas Joint Smasher Nation, LIVE!  Get a ticket or call 304-232-0244!!