Civil War Quilts

Wednesday, February 19, 2025

Lizzie Lisle Marries a Civil War Veteran

Collection of the National Museum of American History

Quilt attributed to Lizzie Lisle (1836-1913), donated by

Lizzie's grand-niece Lois Marmon Flannery (1900-1986) with

another (see below.)

Lizzie Lisle grew up in Cadiz in eastern Ohio

The second quilt Lois Marmon Flannery donated in 1938 was a Turkey red and white

hearts & darts.

"FLANNERY, Mrs. J. P., Baltimore, Md.: 2 bordered appliqued quilts made between 1866 and 1870 by the lender’s aunt, Lizzie Lisle (Mrs. Eden Randall), of Cadiz, Ohio (144535, loan)."

According to the report she loaned the pair of

applique quilts with the information they were made

in the late 1860s in Cadiz.

Lizzie would have been in her early thirties right after the Civil War.

Perhaps living at home with her parents after the war as she is shown in the 1860 census

in Harrison County.

According to the museum's captions: "Elizabeth (Lizzie) Lisle [was] daughter of John Lisle (1803-1890) and Elizabeth Johnston (1811-1889). Members of the extended Lisle family were early settlers in Jefferson & Harrison Counties in Ohio."

Local histories tell us that Lizzie might have arrived in Harrison County at the age of 3 with her parents. Father John, born in Ohio, descended from Scottish immigrants, was married in 1831 by a Presbyterian minister to Eliza Ann Johnston (Johnson) daughter of Robert Johnston. Eliza (1811-1889) and the Johnsons seems to have been Swedish immigrants. Lois Flannery was granddaughter to Eliza Johnson Lisle's sister. While Eliza lived in Ohio her sister, grandniece Lois and other family members lived in the Dakotas and the Northern plains.

1880 Census

At some point between the censuses of 1860 and 1880 Lizzie went west to Jasper County, Iowa, about 30 miles east of Des Moines, where she taught school. At the age of fifty she married for the first time to 45-year-old Eden Randall (1841-1934) who had been born in Delaware County, Ohio.

Living in Indianola, Iowa when the war began, Eden joined the 3rd Iowa Volunteers (Company G) early in the war and was imprisoned for six months after the battle of Shiloh. Returning to battle he was wounded in the face at Vicksburg in the summer of 1863. He went home to Keokuk, Iowa to recover.

He wrote his own obituary published in the

Altoona Herald-Mitchellville Index in January, 1934.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/76720514/lizzie-randall

Lizzie's grand-niece attributed both applique quilts to Lizzie and thought they might have been made in the five year period after the Civil War.

The two quilts have some style in common: The use of solid fabrics rather than prints; Turkey red on a white background. Both are appliqued and quilted with a similar diagonal square grid as filler quilting. Could Lizzie living in Ohio have made both after the Civil War? Cotton fabrics, probably still somewhat scarce, were cheaper than they'd been during the war.

But the more complex quilt does not look like an 1870s applique.

As far as pattern--- and border style enclosed in sawtooth triangles

I'd say the design was related to Maryland quilts like this one made for

Matilda Jones Swope of Liberty, Frederick County, Maryland with blocks dated 1844-1847.

DAR Museum Collection

That rather quirky geometric shape has lately

been called The Apple Pie Ridge pattern in Virginia.

DAR Museum Collection

A more elaborate version date-inscribed 1851 attributed to

Eliza and Sarah Waring of Anne Arundel County, Maryland.

Without any other information than the photo I'd

guess Smithsonian's quilt is 1845-1860 from Maryland or Virginia's eastern shore.

Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Petticoat Press #2: Sarah's Favorite for Fanny Fern

2 Sarah's Favorite for Fanny Fern by Denniele Bohannon

Sarah Payson Willis Eldredge Farrington Parton (1811-1872)

Drawn from a commercial cabinet card dated 1864.

Sarah's Favorite remembers "Fanny Fern" a penname that became Sarah's favorite name. Intimates called her Fanny once she was a famous journalist. And famous journalist she was.

When in "reduced circumstances," several women took up the pen. Sarah's marital troubles and poverty mortified the Willis family who gave her little help. First widowed, then divorced after her second marriage, she determined to make a living in the newspapers.

The Willis men were journalists themselves editing periodicals about Calvinism, contemporary society and music. Her penname was so effective her brother did not know that his sister was Fanny Fern writing those popular columns for his own paper The Home Journal (a magazine of manners that evolved into Town & Country.). Once Nathaniel Willis found out he told assistant James Parton (eventually Fanny's third husband) to fire her.

James Parton (1822-1891)

Fanny's happiest marriage was to English-born James,

editor turned well-respected biographer.

Hearing of her firing, a competitor, editor of the New York Ledger, thought so much of her writing that he offered her $100 an installment for a serialized story---the format in which novels like Dickens's and Harriett Beecher Stowe's were often introduced. Fanny who'd begun writing for 5 cents a column was now the highest paid woman journalist in the United States in the 1850s.

Popular enough (thanks to Fanny) to post a circulation of 377,000

The New York Ledger is like Fanny quite obscure today---digitized copies not complete.

Sheet music riding on Sarah's novel Ruth Hall's popularity

Sarah's Favorite by Jeanne Arnieri

Fanny looked to her own experiences for her novels. Ruth Hall, which tells the story of her first marriage, her poverty-stricken widowhood and her success as a writer, sold more than 70,000 copies in a year after its 1854 publication. The basic premise was a cliche---woman without male help in financial straits---but the plot takes a dramatic turn. She succeeds on her own---new husband not required.

Curmudgeon Nathaniel Hawthorne was not a fan of female authors. In 1855 he wrote his editor that "America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women..." But he made an exception for Ruth Hall.

"In my last, I recollect, I bestowed some vituperation on female authors. I have since been reading 'Ruth Hall;' and I must say I enjoyed it a good deal. The woman writes as if the Devil was in her; and that is the only condition under which a woman ever writes anything worth reading."

Her novels sold well but not as well as the collected editions of her newspaper columns. Once a week the Ledger published her observations on culture, social mores and the irritating happenings she observed. Women did not write of irritation. She was unique and amusing, reminding one of the columns Calvin Trillin wrote for The Nation in the 1970s (I believe he earned the same amount that Fanny did 100 years later---low 3 figures.)

The status of women in all its complexities was her major interest handled with irony, satire and cynicism. Here is an imaginary letter from Hella seeking advice from an imaginary advice columnist.

"One bright afternoon I found myself in agreeable proximity to a young gentleman, to whom I resolved to make my wishes known; or in plain words, I asked the man if he would marry me, I wish you could have seen the look he gave me. ―Ah! Who shall paint that gaze? The largest, wildest pair of blue eyes I ever saw stared me in the face then. Poor fellow! Such a look of horror and amazement as his countenance wore, you never conceived of....I am getting old; what shall I do? "

The advice giver's reply (a bit insensitive to our ears:)

"The Editor responds: We would advise Hella to propose to a blind man this year."

This, of course, makes no sense but it is surprising and amusing---something no other female columnist at the time would attempt so successfully.

Sarah's Favorite by Becky Brown

One of the 1864 portraits. Fanny's hair is so

completely unfashionable for the times that one could

only guess she was inordinately proud of her curls

or making a personal stand against fashion.

Sarah's Favorite by Elsie Ridgley

Fanny continued the weekly column during the Civil War. Her first campaign was against shirkers who refused Lincoln's call to arms.

"We have no words to express our disgust...at the spectacle of a young man thus yawning away existence .... His well-knit limbs should be encased in a petticoat, and a subscription should be immediately raised to present him with a sewing-machine."

This threat to feminize and thus mortify malingerers seems inconsistent with her usual stands on equality. To quote friend Walt Whitman:

"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself."

The Block

Prints from my Morris Manor collection for Moda.

The block named Sarah's Favorite is from the Ladies Art Company, published decades after Fanny's death. BlockBase #2311.

Sarah's Favorite by Becky Collis

A biography of Fanny: https://fannyfern.org/bio

Preview of Joyce Warren's biography:

Fanny Fern: An Independent Woman

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Susan Cutter Wyman's Civil War

Collection of the St. Louis Art Museum

https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/37239/

Silk star quilt attributed to Susan Cutter Wyman

Susan Frances Cutter Wyman (1789-1864)

Susan Cutter Wyman was in her 70s during the Civil War, living in Hillsboro, Illinois. The Wymans, Massachusetts natives, came west to join eldest son Edward (1815-1885) who'd moved to Hillsboro to teach at the Hillsboro Academy, which became a Lutheran school.

According to family history Susan pieced this quilt of over 3,600 patches of silk in seven months in 1860 right before the war began.

That year the census taker found her and husband Nehemiah, a retired butcher, in Hillsboro with daughter Sophia, her four children and Barbara Cothra (?) probably a live-in, teen-age servant.
With servant Barbara, daughter Sophia and possibly granddaughter Ellen to help with the housework Susan may have had a lot of free time. Susan was mother to six grown children, most of them living in St. Louis.

Susan's death notice from the St. Louis Daily Republican November 16, 1864.

Style, pattern and fabric make the date difficult to corroborate. Changes in silks, especially plain and plaid silks like those found here, are not easily put into a time line. When one compares it to other quilted bedcovers of silk satins & taffetas one finds similar style in early 19th-century Quaker quilts.

Smithsonian Institution

Quilted silk star associated with Clara Tarleton Penn (1782-1831)

of Maryland. We can guess being married to a man

named William Penn she was a Quaker.

Detail of Susan Cutter Wyman's quilt showing feather quilting.

Susan's quilt has much in common with Quaker quilts from the first half of the 19th century. Was she a Quaker? We find little to corroborate that notion. While she seems to have dressed plainly in Quaker-style dress I was surprised to find a picture of her husband with a fancy silk top hat.

Nehemiah Wyman 1786-1869

From a genealogy book focused on the family.

Quakers do not create coats of arms to show their pedigrees.

But...

When Sukey Cutter and Nehemiah married in 1812 in Massachusetts an Intention of Marriage was published. Other religions might require a declaration of intentions but Quakers certainly did. Was Sukey a Quaker until she married Nehemiah? (One cannot marry outside the religion and remain an
official Quaker.) I am not a Quaker but I had a Quaker father-in-law for 20 years and he enjoyed telling me Quaker history.

Was this quilt one Susan made early in the century? Or perhaps a gift from a Massachusetts Quaker relative?

Her Find-a-Grave file:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/139187509/susan_frances_wyman

Wednesday, January 29, 2025

2025's Applique Block of the Month Starts in March

Our 2025 Applique Block of the Month series begins here on the last Wednesday of March. Models are made----well, some models are started; some tops are DONE. Many years I base the series on a woman's diary from the Civil War era such as Mary Chesnut's, Caroline Cowles Richards's or Sarah Fowler Morgan's.

Sara Tappan Doolittle Lawrence Robinson

(1827-1911) when she was thirty

This year's journal is by Sara T.D. Robinson (as she called herself), written in her first year in Kansas where she and her husband came from Massachusetts to fight slavery. Kansas; Its Interior and Exterior Life. A Full View of Its Settlement, Political History, Social Life, Climate, Soil, Productions, Scenery, Etc. was published in 1856.

My copy of Sara's diary had a leaf pressed inside.

Who owned it before me?

Sara T.D. Robinson lived on the crest of a rocky ridge overlooking the Kansas plains, the same geological formation that I live on. One hundred and seventy years and a few miles separate our houses on Mount Oread (once called Hog Back Ridge.)

Sara lived on the crest of the ridge overlooking the town.

We’ll spend March to December, 2025 observing how Sara saw the natural world around her as she braved Bushwhackers and primitive living conditions while enjoying the flora and fauna, particularly the native birds.