Submitted by Leona Baker, president of the Historical Society of Salisbury Township, with input by Rita Wert

Several years ago, Bud Zimmerman, a well-known businessman in the Gap/Christiana area, donated a coverlet once owned by his grandmother to the Historical Society of Salisbury Township. The design featured more than 50 hand-embroidered circles, each consisting of up to 35 hand-stitched names in a pie-shaped formation. The only thing Bud knew about the coverlet was that a Gap organization called the WCTU had created it in the late 19th or early 20th centuries. How Bud's grandmother ended up with the coverlet was unknown.

The center circle of signatures contains the words "Gap WCTU ... Mrs. M. Coates, Pres." While there may be a few in the community today who can remember what those letters stand for, research was needed to discover more about this coverlet and why it had been constructed.

The Women's Christian Temperance Association (WCTU) was founded in 1873. Believing that women are morally superior, the organization operated on the premise that alcohol and other drugs were the cause of society's larger problems. The goal was "to protect the morals of the family through total abstinence of ... (all addictive substances)." Within 10 years, there were more than a thousand local affiliates nationally, called "unions."

Local chapters were largely autonomous but linked to state and national headquarters. The association grew to become the largest and most influential women's group in the 19th century. Very soon, branches had spread throughout the world. Believing that social problems were interconnected, eventually the movement would embrace prison and labor law reform.

Member groups eventually added the right for women to vote in order "to protect the home and cure society's ills." It is believed that the prohibition of alcoholic beverage sales, enacted in 1919 as the 18th Amendment to the Constitution of the United States, was the direct outcome of WCTU lobbying. It prohibited the making, transport and sale of all alcoholic beverages in the United States.

According to Bud, the Gap chapter encouraged people of the township to pay to have their names embroidered on squares in the pie design of the coverlet. People paid 5 cents to have their name within the circle and 25 cents for their name to be on the perimeter of the circle. The squares eventually were joined together to form the coverlet. The finished project was then auctioned off, financing the local chapter's participation in the national movement to promote abstinence from drinking alcohol and other reforms in the area more than 100 years ago.

Today the WCTU is still active, with chapters in every state. In the 21st century, the organization holds programs at schools and churches to educate children and adults alike on the hazards of tobacco, alcohol and the use of illegal drugs. It is known as the oldest non-sectarian woman's organization in continuous existence in the world. Rita Wert is the current president of the Pennsylvania chapter, and the local Lancaster County chapter is presided over by D. Fox of New Holland.

For more information on the organization, visit http://www.wctu.org.