Carry A. Nation
Carry's Daughter Charlien
Carry was often concerned about the health of her daughter, Charlien,
who was frequently ill throughout her life:
About this time my little Charlien, who had been such a help to me, began to go into a
decline, until she was taken down with typhoid fever. Her case was violent and she was delirious from
the first. This my only child was peculiar. She was the result of a drunken father and a distracted
mother. The curse of heredity is one of the most heart-breaking results of the saloon. Poor little
children are brought into the world with the curse of drink and disease entailed upon them. How can
mothers be true to their offspring with a constant dread of the nameless horrors wives are exposed to
by being drunkards' wives. Men will not raise domestic animals under conditions where the mothers may
bring forth weak or deformed offspring. Frances Willard [President of the WCTU] says, "Right
generation is the greatest problem of the race," the ignorance of the mothers and the ignorance and vice
of the fathers is given to the children before they are born, and these feeble and deformed minds and
bodies with the depraved appetites threatens to deteriorate the human family, and we will be a
race of idiots and insane people if something isn't done; as Jesus says, "Unless these days be shortened,
no flesh can be saved" Matt. 24:22. I heard of a mother who was wise enough to understand pre-natal
influence. She said she was going to have a literary family and when she expected to be a mother she
read eagerly all the good literary writings, she had what she prepared for.
If girls were taught that a drunkard's curse will in the nature of things include his children
and also that if either parent allowed bad thoughts or actions to come into their lives, that their
offspring will be a reproduction of their own sins, they would avoid these men, and men will give up
their vice before they will give up women.
-- The Use and Need of the Life
of Carry A. Nation, Written by Herself, 1908.
Despite poor health much of her life, Charlien outlived Carry. She married and had five children
who reached adulthood.
Return to "What Led Carry to Become a Crusader?"
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