Ghost Stories: The Temperance Crusade and a chat with a local legend

Ladies and gentlemen, before we proceed to the court case involving uptown Hillsboro business owner William Henry Harrison Dunn and the Temperance crusaders, let’s take a step back for a bit of perspective from a Highland County native son who came into this world just months before the legendary crusade.

Hugh Stuart Fullerton III was born Sept. 10, 1873 and was known as an influential sportswriter and journalist of the first half of the 20th century. Hugh’s been gone for seven decades now, but let’s hop in our way back machine and visit with him for a few moments around the time he uncovered the 1919 “Black Sox” World Series Scandal. I’ve got some questions I’d like to ask him and perhaps you do, too.

Good morning, it’s an honor to meet you, Mr. Fullerton. I’d love to talk with you about a myriad of things, mostly baseball and all things Highland County, but today let’s chat about the Temperance movement in Hillsboro back in the winter of 1883-84.

“Ah, the crusade always has held for me a rather romantic than religious or moral interest,” Fullerton says with a smile. “‘Mother’ Thompson, who led the crusade, was our neighbor; Mrs. Stevenson and Mrs. Dill, my Sunday School teachers, were crusaders.”

I understand that you’re a bit too young to remember the crusade itself, but you certainly remembered the crusaders.

“I want to tell you the story of the women’s crusade as I learned it as a boy and tell you what manner of women the crusaders were. Possibly you picture them a swarm of avenging amazons marching forth to destroy ‘personal liberty.’ Instead, they were the most modest, quiet, home-loving members of the aristocracy of the beautiful old village set down among the hills of southern Ohio.”

I’m sure that life in Hillsboro, and Ohio in general, was much different in the 1870s than it is today.

“To understand the movement, you must understand Ohio. Northern Ohio was the ‘western reserve of Connecticut,’ settled by Connecticut Yankees. Southern Ohio was settled by the aristocracy of Virginia, the Carolinas and Kentucky, most of whom came there to live on ‘free soil,’ bringing with them swarms of emancipated slaves. Many of them had been rich and they continued their manner of life, holding great tracts of land and building beautiful Colonial mansions. The men, after the manner of their class, drank hard. Since the ‘aristocracy’ drank, almost every man drank.”

Could you please elaborate on the drinking “aristocracy?”

“In Hillsboro, the ‘aristocracy’ drank at home or in the drugstores or the hotels. Every two weeks on Saturday, there was a ‘Stock Sale Day,’ which made the village a drunken hell with brawls, cutting and shooting. It was a ‘hard-drink’ town. Two distilleries in the county maintained the supply. The village was an educational center in Ohio, with two private schools for girls, and the result was that the women were more advanced and better educated than the average of their men. Probably the women always opposed drunkenness, but prior to December 1873, the majority had helped their drunken husbands and sons to bed and hoped the neighbors had not seen them come home.”

And when you were just a child of three months of age in December 1873, that’s when the movement began – and I understand your folks were part of the crusade.

“On Dec. 22, Dio Lewis, a Boston preacher, came to lecture in the ‘Lyceum Course’ – which was the ‘Follies’ of Hillsboro in those days. He was so good, they invited him to stay over and give a temperance lecture the next night, which he did. And, yes, I was born in Hillsboro in September of 1873, and the crusade started Dec. 24. Whether that was a coincidence or not, I am not certain, but I have considered myself lucky. Had I been born
four months later, they would have named me ‘Dio Lewis.’”

Now, that’s funny. Tell us a little about the lecture.

“In this lecture, he stated that some women of his family had prayed with a saloon-keeper who had seen the evil of his ways and closed up shop, and that if the women of Hillsboro had equal faith, they could do likewise. He asked how many women were willing to pray against the saloons, and about 70 rose. He knew that there was to be a meeting at the Presbyterian Church the next morning to arrange for a Christmas program and suggested that they all attend and pray against the saloons.”

So they did, correct?

“On the next morning, the meeting was held. Dr. W.H. McSurely presided and resolutions were drawn up appealing to the liquor dealers. The women elected Mrs. Eliza Jane Trimble Thompson, wife of James Henry Thompson, chairman. Mrs. Thompson had not attended the lecture. Her children reported to her what had been said. Judge Thompson, a tall, stately man, had returned from holding court at West Union in another county and was asleep on the sofa. Local gossip when I was a boy was that the judge had indulged in too many ‘long toddies’ that day and needed repose. He roused himself to inquire: ‘What sort of tomfoolery is this?’”

What, pray tell, was “Mother” Thompson’s response to the judge?

“His wife replied calmly: ‘You men have been in the tomfoolery business for a long time and perhaps it is God’s will that we women do something.’”

OK, let’s pause for now and we’ll continue next week.

Steve Roush is a vice president of an international media company and a columnist and contributing writer for The Highland County Press. He can be reached by email at roush_steve@msn.com.