Convention of the Erie County Women’s Christian Temperance Union in Sandusky

The ninth annual convention of the Erie County Women’s Christian Temperance Union was held on Wednesday, September 20, 1916 at the Congregational Church in Sandusky, Ohio.

The History of Erie County (1889), edited by Lewis Cass Aldrich, states that a number of well known ladies of Sandusky met to organize a temperance league in 1879. Their object of the society was: “combating intemperance and kindred vices through Christian influences and Christian work.”  By 1928, during the Prohibition era, there were several area groups of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union in the various communities of Erie County, which were under the leadership of a Union Board.

Mrs. Imogene Dauch, sister in law of J. J. Dauch, was active in the W.C.T.U. from 1911 through the 1930s, often serving as an officer of the West Huron chapter. She was the Erie County delegate to the Ohio W.C.T.U. Convention in 1929, held at Findlay. At the local convention of the Erie County W.C.T.U. in 1916, Mrs. Dauch opened the convention with prayer and Bible reading, and gave a welcoming address as well as the annual President’s message. Her daughter, Cynthia Aulda Dauch presented a piano solo to the attendees. Cynthia A. Dauch would later become the executive director of the Visiting Nurse Association of Los Angeles. 

Imogene Dauch died in Sandusky in 1975 at the age of 92. Besides her work in the W.C.T.U., she was also a member of Trinity United Methodist Church, the Daughters of 1812, the National Order of the Daughters of the American Revolution, and the Huron Grange.

To read more about temperance activities in Sandusky, see this previous blog post.