Carrie A. Nation and Harvest Home
by Andrea Cassel
Special Newsletter Supplement - Friends of White Clay Creek State Park (FWCCSP RECORD, Vol. 7, No. 2, June 2004, p. 5)
In August 1904 the front page of Wilmington’s Morning News read:
CARRIE NATION SWINGS HATCHET
and sells them to crowd
The scene of this event was in Whiteman’s Grove, Mill Creek Hundred, which now lies in the Possum Hill part of White Clay Creek State Park. Carrie Nation, famous temperance advocate, visited the Newark area to raise funds and support for alcohol prohibition and women’s suffrage as part of the Harvest Home celebrations of the Ebenezer Methodist Church.
Location
Whiteman’s Grove is the wooded area along Muddy Run valley on the northwest side of Paper Mill Road, opposite and between the entrances to Stage and Fox Den Roads. It is easily accessible today by walking along Bryan’s Field Trail from the Possum Hill parking lot. Also in these woods is the marker for the ‘Post Mark'd West’ that Mason and Dixon established in 1764. It was from this point that they began their western trek that established the north/south boundary of Maryland and Pennsylvania. When Mason and Dixon were on this land, it was owned by Alexander Bryan. In 1904 the land was owned by Arthur J. Whiteman. The Whitemans belonged to the Ebenezer Methodist Church and allowed the church to use part of the farm for the Harvest Home.
Harvest Home
Ebenezer Methodist Church’s Harvest Home celebration and picnic was held on a Thursday in August beginning in 1887. In its early years the one held in Whiteman’s Grove was organized by the Ebenezer Methodist Church and The Fairview Lodge of the Good Templars. The Templars were a worldwide temperance group supporting total abstinence and prohibition.
The popularity of Ebenezer’s Harvest Home was noted in the newspapers. One article in 1905 said “….throngs of vehicles of all kinds and persons from miles around attended…” despite bad weather. Candidates for office visited and “...by nightfall the grove was adorned with their cards.” Hacks would meet people at the various Newark train stations and transport them to the festival.
A noontime dinner and evening supper were prepared and served by the ladies of the church. “Fried chicken in abundance and other delicacies of the season...” were offered. Root beer, orange, and grape drink were served. Music, often of a patriotic nature, was offered by local and regional bands. The speakers usually represented the temperance movement.
After Arthur Whiteman sold his farm to Samuel Hallock DuPont in 1929, the Harvest Home was moved to Little’s Grove, which is south of the Ebenezer Methodist Church on Polly Drummond Road. It continued to be held there until the late 1940s.
Carrie A. Nation’s Visit
Carrie A. Nation (1846-1911) visited the Harvest Home in Whiteman’s Grove on August 4, 1904. Her national reputation was created when she started to enter saloons and liquor stores with bricks or hatchets and proceeded to smash bar features and stock. Between 1900 and 1910 she was arrested about 30 times. To pay her fines and support herself, she traveled the country giving lectures and selling souvenir hatchets and books. Her anger against liquor stemmed from her first failed marriage to an alcoholic.
At nearly 6 feet tall and 175 pounds, Carrie Nation was a formidable presence. She traveled alone all around the country. She described herself as “a bulldog running along at the feet of Jesus, barking at what he doesn’t want.”
The trip to Whiteman’s Grove early that afternoon from Newark was by a double horse team carriage. As they approached the outskirts of the Grove a huge crowd surrounded them. The Morning News said, “It was perhaps the greatest day in the history of Mill Creek Hundred and the crowd was estimated at 10,000. Whiteman’s Grove was a surging mass of humanity, through which [her] carriage passed with the greatest difficulty. Vehicles of all descriptions were hitched to trees as far as the eye could see, and the road to Newark was marked by an endless procession of others. All of the surrounding country appeared to have congregated on the spot, and distant points were represented.” The crowd estimate seems much too high, but it must have been quite a scene.
Carrie Nation’s presentation had religious, political, and merchandising messages. She attacked Republican President Theodore Roosevelt. Democrats were equally as bad, just out of office. She urged the crowd to vote for the Prohibition Party. Voting for either of the major parties was voting for the devil. She felt called by God when she went into her first liquor store and began throwing bricks. “I ….hit them with everything I [aimed] at, a strange thing for a woman to do.” She declared that God had given her divine inspiration, especially when a whiskey bottle was the target. Acknowledging that many people view her as a “freak with a hatchet,” she said she had never raised it against a person.
The last part of her presentation was an appeal for funds. Her receipts in Whiteman’s Grove totaled $25 for the sale of hatchets and books. She was paid $60 for her speech. At a Brandywine Springs speech the same weekend, she made $300 and sold out her entire stock.