The Fort Dodge Messenger: March 27, 1903

Mrs. Bacey Made Sudden Flitting

Left Home on Second Avenue North Between Monday Night and Tuesday Morning

Her Whereabouts Unknown

Took Away Most of Furniture and Carrie Nationized the Rest

Mrs. Bacey has gone. The house on Second avenue north, between Twelfth and Thirteenth streets, which has been her home for the past few months, turns a vacant and unseeing gaze on the street, and can throw no light on the mystery of the hasty flitting of its former occupant.

Mrs. Bacey has not only gone, but she went between two days. On Monday evening, she was there; on Tuesday morning she had disappeared. With her had gone most of the furniture. The remainder had been so broken up and dismantled as to be without value. Mrs. Bacey and a hatchet had apparently held high revelry before the time came for moving. Her aim appeared to have been to leave nothing behind her which it would be of any value to any one to appropriate.

Rumor has it that Mrs. Bacey was in arrears some three months on her rent, which is believed to account for her sudden action.

The Bacey family, consisting of the mother and two children, has made its home on Second avenue north for some two or three years, but Mrs. Bacey had few friends in the neighborhood, and no one is able to give any particulars about the moving. That she has moved, and moved unexpectedly, is a fact which cannot be denied.

(Editor’s note: Carrie Nation was a member of the temperance movement. She was known for entering an establishment that served alcohol and applying her hatchet to the premises.)

Tags: 1903, Bacey