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Mary H. Hunt
American Temperance Reformer and Educator
1830-1906
Mary Hannah Hanchett Hunt was a leader in the campaign for temperance education in the schools. She traveled thousands of miles and delivered innumerable messages on temperance, education, and like themes.
Mary was born on June 4, 1830 in South Canaan, Connecticut to Ephraim Hanchett and Nancy Swift. Her father was known as a courageous and enthusiastic worker in the anti-slavery movement and her mother was a direct descendent of Edward Winslow, governor of the Plymouth Colony and Thomas Thacher, the first pastor of Boston’s Old South Church.
She attended local schools and before enrolling in Amenia Seminary in New York in 1847. The next year she entered Patapsco Female Institute, near Baltimore. After graduation she became a professor of natural science at the Seminary. As a professor, she began to study the physiological effects of alcohol, and in doing this she was unconsciously training for her life work in behalf of scientific temperance instruction.
Helen married Leander B. Hunt in October of 1852, and after becoming a mother she found a further education and preparation for her great work. She saw in the traffic of alcohol and the habit of social drinking as the great enemy of humanity and the sorrow of mothers and wives.
Thought it was obvious to her the negative affects liquor had on society, she quickly realized that rescue work was only part of the answer. The real nature and effects of alcoholic drinks upon the mind and body needed to be taught to children. She believed that instruction in the negative effects of alcohol should be mandatory.
Mary was an active member of the National Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). She became the superintendent of the educational department of that group. With Mary in the lead, a new school curriculum on hygiene was created.
Mary Hannah Hanchett Hunt died on April 24, 1906. Her life’s work culminated in the enactment of the Eighteenth Amendment. The Eighteenth Amendment is often traced back to the influence that Mary Hunt had on the generation of school children brought up on W.C.T. U. approved textbooks.
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