During a brief and troubled period in her life, Carry Amelia Moore Nation operated the Old Columbia Hotel on this site about 1880. Born in Kentucky in 1846 to slave-owning parents, she moved with her family to Grayson County, Texas, soon after the outbreak of the Civil War. After an unhappy first marriage in Missouri to an alcoholic, she married David Nation in 1877. They acquired 1,700 acres of farmland on the San Bernard River west of here, but farming and the marriage proved unsuccessful. David moved to Brazoria to practice law, and Carry moved to Columbia to run the hotel owned by A. R. and Jesse W. Park. She lived there with her daughter Charlien Gloyd, Mother Gloyd, her first mother-in-law, and David's daughter Lola, while David also operated a saddle shop just southwest of this site. Her name appears on the Columbia Methodist Church roll. The family soon moved to Richmond, Texas, to operate a hotel, then moved to Kansas in 1889. After Carry began her crusade against saloons, the Nations divorced in 1901. She later became famous as a hatchet-wielding crusader against the use of alcoholic drink and tobacco and lectured at the University of Texas in Austin in 1902 and 1904.