Carry Nation’s militant crusades against the liquor traffic began at Kiowa, Kansas about 1900. After “cleaning up” the town to her satisfaction she turned her face toward Wichita. She met with considerable opposition in the big town and her raids landed her in jail, but friends paid her out. At Topeka she used the hatchet for the first time in her raids.
After a few years of raiding and smashing she went into chautauqua to lecture on temperance. She made a speaking tour in Europe in 1908 and landed in jail in Scotland where she had to serve the full sentence. (The Scotch did not like to see their whiskey spilled). In 1909, at the age of sixty-three, she bought a little farm near Alpena in Boone County, Arkansas where she spent a part of her time during the year that followed. Then she selected Eureka Springs as her retirement home and purchased a two-story frame house on Steele Street which she named Hatchet Hall. She decided to start a college at Eureka Springs for the teaching of temperance. She called it the Carry A. Nation College and erected a frame building near her home for class rooms. But the college did not last long for in 1911, while making a temperance speech from a buggy in the street in front of the Basin Circle, she had a stroke, and died a few days later. Her body was taken to her girlhood home at Belton, Missouri for burial.
XX
A BANK ROBBERY THAT FAILED
On the night of September 26, 1922, five men were camped in the woods on the hill near where the Mount Air Court is now located, well hidden from the traffic on U. S. Highway 62. Sitting around the camp fire were Si Wilson, Marcus Hendrix, a 21-year-old Indian, a man named Cowan, and the two Price brothers, Charlie and George. They were desperate Oklahoma outlaws from the Cookson Hills, remnants of the old Henry Starr gang. Their business at Eureka Springs was to rob the First National Bank.
Sitting around the bed of coals this September night, the outlaws discussed their plans. Charlie Price, the leader, did most of the talking. He outlined the plan for the robbery on the morrow at 12:05 P.M. when practically all business houses would be closed for the lunch hour. Hendrix was to remain in the car at the front of the bank, ready for a quick getaway.
“I guess you fellers know what you’re doing,” said Wilson, who had recently joined the gang. “But don’t forget what Sam Lockard and Henry Starr said. They warned you that Eureka Springs was a deathtrap.”
Price laughed and said that it would be easy because everything was well planned.
“We’d better hit the hay and get some sleep,” said Charlie. “Big day tomorrow.” As he rolled into his blankets he remembered to wind his watch. He turned the stem carefully in the darkness but fate took a hand and a little extra pressure sent the hands around one revolution without his knowledge. His faithful old watch had played a trick on him.
At exactly 11:05 A.M., mistaken by the bandits to be 12:05 P.M., a car drove up in front of the First National Bank on Spring Street. Hendrix remained at the wheel while the four others entered the bank. The story of the robbery and its tragic aftermath has been told in newspapers, by Horace H. Brown in Startling Detective Magazine, and by Cora Pinkley Call in her book “Eureka Springs—The Stair-Step Town.”
Members of the bank staff on duty on September 27, 1922, were: Tobe Smith, cashier, Fred Sawyer, teller, Mrs. Maude Shuman, Miss Loma Sawyer and Miss Jewel Davidson. Customers in the bank when the robbers entered were: Sam Holland, Robert Easley, John Easley and Luther Wilson. Others who walked in while the holdup was in progress were: John K. Butt, Claude Arbuckle and Bob Bowman, clerk at the Basin Park Hotel.