Ghost Stories: The Temperance Crusade and remembering Mother Thompson

Ladies and gentlemen, as we return yet again to the year of our Lord 1919 and continue our chat with Highland County native son Hugh Fullerton, I turn the focus of our conversation to arguably the most famous name of the Temperance Crusade, the name that greets us at the city limits as you and I drive into Hillsboro today.

“Mr. Fullerton,” I ask the famous journalist, “could you please tell us some more about Eliza Jane Trimble Thompson?”

“Mrs. Thompson believed almost from the first that the movement was divinely ordered, and I do not think her faith that the crusade would eventually rid the world of the curse of liquor ever faltered,” Mr. Fullerton says matter-of-factly.

“You told us earlier that you and your family were neighbors of Judge and Mother Thompson,” I recall. “What are some of your early memories of her?”

He smiles, “When I was a little fellow, she lived in a great grove mostly of walnut and locust trees in a quaint old Colonial house. For a mile beyond the house, ‘the pasture’ rolled away to join the Trimble lands. She was the daughter of Allen Trimble, one of the early governors of Ohio, and she was related to the McDowells, the Smiths, the McArthurs, the Beechers, the Buckinghams – all of Revolutionary aristocratic stock.

“I used to crawl through holes in the tall picket fence which surrounded the grove and follow up the long, winding driveways past the well-house and the summer-houses until I came to a porch upon which sat a very little, very prim, very white old lady with a white lace cap upon her white hair, fresh-ruffled white tie under her chin and a white shawl over her shoulders…”

“She does, indeed, sound very white,” I interject.

“In childhood, I used to confuse her with the fairy godmother of the stories,” Mr. Fullerton continues. “Her eyes always were bright and almost laughing, but her face was in repose. She would ask me to sit on the porch and tell me quaint little stories which perhaps she had invented for her own children. … Sometimes she asked me whether I marched with the Temperance Cadets and talked of the crusade and of temperance, although what she said I
have now quite forgotten. I remember that she told me how the curse of the drink falls upon all who touch it.

“Perhaps the memory remains because it seemed terrible to me,” Mr. Fullerton says as he reflects on those conversations of yore. “She named one by one those who had been liquor sellers, their sons and daughters, and told of the shame, disgrace and death that had come to them. Not one of the families had escaped the curse and some had perished utterly in vice and crime. Yet, I never heard her speak an unkind word of the saloon men, but she spoke in sorrow and pity. It seems strange to me that she should call them ‘Robert’ and ‘Jacob.’”

“When you grew older and became a newspaperman, did you ever get a chance to talk more about the crusade with Mother Thompson?” I ask.

“In later years I asked her questions – how the crusade was planned and why the women did certain things, and once she said: ‘Why, child, the Lord told us to do them!’” he recalls. “She seemed surprised that I did not understand what to her was so self-evident a fact. Once, after I had grown to the dignity of reporter on the village paper, the Wets had won an election and the long-banished saloons were restored. The politicians refused to enforce laws, whiskey was sold openly, the ‘gentlemen drinkers’ had their tipple in the drug stores and the farmers hauled away great quantities of whiskey for sale in cross-roads stores. Stock Sale Day again was a drunken orgy and Saturday night a series of brawls. I recited to her the village record of drunkenness, debauchery, rioting and murder and asked whether, in the face of such evidence, the crusade could be considered a success.”

“So what did Mother Thompson say?” I ask curiously.

“‘Oh, yes,’ she said complacently, ‘it has been a wonderful success,’” Mr. Fullerton replied. “She said, ‘It was the beginning, and the work everywhere is going forward. Men and cities will backslide as Hillsboro has done, but only for a time and the work goes on. It will not come in my day, but you will live to see the end of all of this, not only in Hillsboro, but in the entire country.’

“I inquired why she believed this, and she said: ‘Because it is evil and the Lord is against it. Whether, in the beginning, this conviction was firmly fixed in her mind is uncertain, but in later years she believed that the movement was ordained of God and that she was a humble instrument chosen for the work.”

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.