Thursday, March 21, 2019

She was born Caroline Amelia Moore in 1846 and lived a lifetime of struggle before the world knew her as hatchet-toting temperance radical Carry Nation. The fascinating and largely unknown story, Carry Nation: A Woman of Substance, will be told at 2 p.m. and repeated at 6 p.m. Thursday, March 21, at the Fond du Lac Public Library. The History at Home program – a celebration of Women’s History Month sponsored by Soroptimist International of Fond du Lac – is free; no registration required. Refreshments will be served by club members.

Local historian Tracy Reinhardt will share the forces that formed Carry Nation into the woman she became. Her presentation will detail Nation’s early life and what formed her ideas and determination: born to a slave-owning family on a Kentucky farm, her family surviving a murderous raid and her two failed marriages – the first to an alcoholic that lasted five months, the second to a man 19 years her senior who couldn’t make a living. Nation learned to fend for herself.

Reinhardt will follow the trail of Nation’s life, what brought her to her radical anti-alcohol ways and, eventually, a stop in Fond du Lac.

Reinhardt, a frequent History at Home presenter, was born and raised in Fond du Lac County and has been collecting stories of family and early Fond du Lac history for more than 40 years. She is library director/archivist for the Fond du Lac County Historical Society.

The library’s History at Home series focuses on stories about the area’s past every third Thursday of the month at 2 p.m. and repeated at 6 p.m. (no program in December).