The United States was a hotbed of social reform movements in the nineteenth century. Abolition, women’s suffrage, child labor, temperance, and prison  reform were just a few that swept the nation. In his book ‘Echoes of the Nineties,’ Frederic Marcus Wood had an exciting tale to tell of one such group of intrepid souls who organized a temperance society in North Madison.

Saloons of the Madison type and their products were responsible for the Temperance movement which eventually, for better or for worse, culminated in the eighteenth amendment. Temperance orators and temperance theatricals were always sure of appreciative audiences, and temperance declamations were much in favor with school youngsters when it became necessary to speak a piece. I suppose that “Ten Nights in a Bar Room”* might safely be termed the “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” of the temperance reform. In the wake of all this publicity sprang up temperance societies and North Madison was fully up to date in this respect. The young folks of the Chapel community organized with alacrity and soon had a flourishing society whose members signed the pledge and wore their blue ribbons proudly on all occasions. Unsophisticated we were, but we had convictions and enthusiasm for a cause – qualities which seem to have gone into a decline with the advent of the “Oh, Yeah?” age.

But what really made our society was the name, “Guild.” The minister suggested it and as nobody had ever heard it before it went over big, and when printed in bold, black type on a blue ribbon made a badge of distinction. The Guild was in full swing when I went away to college where the multiplicity of new interests took it completely out of my mind. Many years later Frank Hendry, shortly before his death, told me of the Guild’s tragic end. It seems the society’s fame had been noised abroad and the officers were invited to come to Fairport and install a second chapter in the drink-cursed harbor town fifteen miles to the west.

The installation ceremony was a tremendous success but what followed was sad indeed. Whether the bright lights bedazzled the rural blue ribboners, or whether the exhilaration of the occasion turned their heads, or whether they felt the urge to acquire some first-hand knowledge of the dens of iniquity they were seeking to destroy will probably never be known, but the fact remains that, in the early morning hours, they returned to their native heath in a state of audible hilarity, making the welkin** ring with such ribald songs as “Give Us A Drink, Bartender,” and “We Won’t Go Home Till Morning.” The North Madison Temperance Guild did not survive the shock but its good influence continued to be felt. The Fairport society, blissfully unaware of the downfall of its founders, grew and prospered as a potent factor in the movement which, for better or for worse, culminated in the noble experiment.

* Ten Nights in A Bar Room – Ten Nights in a Bar-room and What I Saw There is an 1854 novel written by American author Timothy Shay Arthur. The book is a temperance novel, written expressly to discourage readers from drinking alcohol. It was a commercial and popular success upon its release and was later adapted into other media.
** welkin – literary reference, the sky.

Submitted by Jesse Devin, Social Media Assistant Madison Historical Society