Carrie Amelia Moore was born on November 25, 1846, in Garrard County, Kentucky. Her parents were George Moore and Mary Campbell Moore. Her father wanted to spell her name “Carry,” but as a child she was “Carrie.” The Moore family lived on a large farm where Carrie grew up with several siblings and spent many hours with the family’s slaves. All her life she was comfortable with people of various races.

In 1854, with civil war on the horizon, Carrie’s father moved the family to High Grove Farm near Belton in Cass County, Missouri. Rather than finding peace, Carrie’s family found people divided over political issues. In 1862 the Moores moved again, this time to Texas.

The next year, the family returned to their farm in Missouri, but the Civil War followed them. Union commanders ordered everyone out of parts of the Kansas-Missouri border, including Cass County. The Moores moved to Kansas City, and Carrie learned the brutal side of battle when she traveled with another woman to nurse soldiers after a raid in Independence, Missouri.

After the war, the Moores returned to their farm. Carrie, now twenty-one, married Charles Gloyd on November 21, 1867. Gloyd, once a boarder at the Moore’s house, was a young physician who had fought for the Union. Carrie did not realize that Gloyd, whom she loved dearly, had a severe drinking problem. Soon Carrie became pregnant, and it was clear that Gloyd could not support her because of his excessive drinking. Heartbroken, Carrie returned to her family home.

When her only child was born on September 27, 1868, Carrie named her Charlien after her husband. Only six months later, Charles Gloyd died. Carrie sold land her father had given her as well as her husband’s books and medical equipment and built a small house in Holden, Missouri. There she lived with her child and mother–in–law. From May 1871 to July 1872 Carrie Gloyd attended school to earn a teaching certificate at the Normal Institute in Warrensburg, Missouri. She taught in Holden for four years.

In 1874 Carrie Gloyd married David Nation, a widower with children who was nineteen years older than she. David Nation was a journalist for a Warrensburg newspaper. He was also a lawyer and preacher. Together, they lived with their children in Warrensburg for a few years. Then they moved to Texas in 1877. While her husband practiced law, Carrie Nation managed a hotel in Columbia and then bought and ran one in Richmond, Texas, for ten years. She was a deeply religious person and started having visions and dreams during this period.

In 1889 Nation’s husband became a preacher, and they moved to Medicine Lodge, Kansas. Here she began a career of charity and religious work and became known as “Mother Nation.” She took a deep interest in helping unfortunate people, especially women and children, and became known for her generosity. Nation organized a chapter of the Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). The WCTU had helped pass a Kansas law against selling alcohol. In Missouri, each county could decide to be wet or dry.

Nation also tried to help prisoners in the jail. She came to believe that alcohol had caused the troubles of the inmates. Illegal bars and men's clubs in Kansas still served liquor. Nation and another member of the WCTU decided to get rid of the bars by standing outside them, praying loudly and singing hymns. Soon, the bars in Medicine Lodge were closed.

In 1900 Nation believed that God told her to go to Kiowa, Kansas, and close the bars there. Rather than use hymns and prayer, however, Nation threw bricks. She continued her destructive tactics in Wichita, Kansas. In Topeka in 1901, someone handed her a hatchet.

Nation was a strong, six-foot-tall woman, and when her method became violent, people noticed. The Kansas WCTU presented her with a gold medallion inscribed, “To the Bravest Woman in Kansas.” The crowds of followers grew, but her marriage fell apart. By November 1901, she was divorced. Again alone, Nation sold little pewter hatchets to raise money and took on speaking engagements. She was beaten and jailed many times. After one “smashing,” Nick Chiles, a black politician and bar owner, bailed her out of jail. He also published her first newspaper, The Smasher's Mail.

The Hatchet was Nation’s second attempt at starting a regular magazine. It contained her writings, news from saloon fighters, and letters from supporters throughout the United States. Besides writing about the evils of liquor, Nation wrote articles suggesting that women should get the vote, articles that gave advice about rearing children, and articles about the joys of a happy home.

In 1903 Carrie Nation officially changed her name to “Carry,” saying it meant "“Carry A Nation for Prohibition.” When her autobiography was published, she made enough money to buy a house in Kansas City, Kansas, to shelter the wives and mothers of drunkards. Later, a lecture tour took her to Great Britain.

Many people made fun of Carry Nation. A group of college students lured her to campus by pretending to support her, and used her visit to put her down. Instead of becoming angry, she suggested that women should have the power to change things through the democratic process of voting: “The loving moral influence of mothers must be put in the ballot box.”

Exhausted and ill, Carry Nation retired to Eureka Springs, Arkansas, and bought a house large enough for her and several women who had lost their homes because of alcoholic husbands. She collapsed while giving a lecture in Eureka Springs in January 1911 and died on June 2, 1911, at the age of 64. She is buried beside her mother in Belton, Missouri.