Eliza Daniel Coover Stewart
Eliza Daniel Coover Stewart, often referred to as Mother Stewart, was a prominent American temperance reformer born on a farm near Piketon, Ohio. Orphaned by the age of twelve, she was educated and later became a teacher. Stewart's first marriage ended in widowhood, but she later married Hiram Stewart and raised his two sons. Her involvement in the temperance movement began after she was deeply influenced by her upbringing, which regarded alcohol as a destructive force. She played a significant role in organizing the first women's temperance league in Ohio and became active during the Women's Crusade, a nationwide movement that sought to shut down saloons through prayer vigils and community activism.
Stewart's efforts included speaking against liquor at local meetings and participating in legal cases against alcohol retailers under Ohio's Adair Law. She was a key figure in founding the national Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) and advocated for issues such as woman suffrage. Her work extended internationally, where she helped establish the British Women's Temperance Union during a speaking tour in Great Britain. Eliza Stewart lived to the age of ninety-two, leaving behind a legacy as a matriarch of the temperance movement and authoring two notable books on the subject. She passed away in Hicksville, Ohio, and was buried in Springfield, Ohio.
Subject Terms
Eliza Daniel Coover Stewart
- Eliza Daniel Coover Stewart
- Born: April 25, 1816
- Died: August 6, 1908
Temperance reformer known as Mother Stewart, was born on a farm near Piketon, Ohio. Her father, James Daniel, was from Virginia and her mother, Rebecca (Guthery) Daniel, was the granddaughter of Captain John Guthery, an officer in the revolutionary war.
Both parents had died by the time Eliza Daniel was twelve. After being educated in Piketon and in seminaries at Granville and Marietta, Ohio, she became a teacher. Her first marriage, to Joseph Coover, ended in widowhood after only a few months. In 1848 she married Hiram Stewart, son of a prominent farmer, whose two sons she raised. All five children born of the marriage died in infancy. Until 1866 the family lived in Athens, Ohio.
Eliza Stewart was soon attracted to the temperance movement. She had been brought up to regard alcohol as a poison that destroyed families and caused poverty and misery; in this she was confirmed by her Methodism. In 1858 she helped organize a lodge of the Good Templars, a national temperance organization open to both men and women. Her temperance activities were interrupted by the Civil War, during which she devoted herself to the welfare of Union troops on the southern fronts and thus acquired the sobriquet Mother Stewart.
After the war, when the Stewarts moved to Springfield, Ohio, she began to speak against liquor at various local temperance meetings. In 1872 she was asked to speak for the prosecution in a lawsuit brought by the wife of a drunkard. (According to the provisions of the state’s Adair Law, a retailer could be sued by the wife or mother of any alcoholic to whom he had sold liquor.) Stewart’s impromptu closing speech to the jury was credited with winning a conviction. In October 1873 she helped obtain a second conviction in a similar case. Encouraged to seek more prosecutions under the Adair Act, she and a group of women supporters petitioned for a town ordinance against the retail sale of liquor (the state prohibition law was rarely enforced). They also organized a series of meetings to arouse antiliquor sentiment.
Early in December of 1873, at Osborn, Ohio, Stewart organized the first women’s temperance league. About two weeks later Ohio was swept by the surge of temperance activism known as the Women’s Crusade, a movement that soon spread to other states. With local churches as rallying points, bands of women used prayer vigils and exhortation to shut down hundreds of saloons. In Springfield, Stewart became president of the town’s new temperance union, and in April she became head of the county union, said to be the first in the country. In June she founded a state union.
The crusade culminated in November 1874, when delegates from seventeen states met in Cleveland and founded the national Woman’s Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). At the convention Stewart was regarded as somewhat of a radical because she favored woman suffrage, but strong support from the Illinois delegate, Frances E. Willard, enabled Stewart to be elected head of the resolutions committee. In 1879, after Willard became president of the WCTU, Stewart was made head of the committee on southern work and organized unions in the South.
Tours abroad made her an international figure. During 1876 her speaking tour of Great Britain on behalf of the Good Templars stimulated the founding of the British Women’s Temperance Union. In 1895 she gave the opening speech at the World’s WCTU convention in London. She was then in her late seventies, an imposing matriarch of temperance.
Stewart died at ninety-two in Hicksville, Ohio, at the home of her former secretary, Mrs. M. M. Farnsworth, where she had been living for a year. She was buried at Ferncliff Cemetery, Springfield, Ohio.
Stewart wrote two books: Memories of the Crusade: A Thrilling Account of the Great Uprising of the Women of Ohio in 1873, against the Liquor Crime (1888) and The Crusader in Great Britain: or, the History of the Origin and Organization of the British Women’s Temperance Association (1893). Useful biographical sketches appear in F. E. Willard, Woman and Temperance (1883); F. E. Willard and M. A. Livermore, eds., A Woman of the Century (1893; reprinted 1967); and M. F. Eastman, The Biography of Dio Lewis (1891). See also The Dictionary of American Biography (1936) and Notable American Women (1971). Obituaries appeared in The Springfield [Ohio] Daily News and Press-Republic, August 9-10, 1908; The Springfield Times and The Republican Gazette, August 8, 1908; The New York Times, August 8, 1908.