Saturday, May 31, 2014

Threads of Memory 5: Madison Star for Delia Webster

5 Madison Star by Becky Brown

 The patterns were free online for two years but now I am offering them for sale in two formats
at my Etsy shop. Buy a PDF or a Paper Pattern through the mail here:

In June, 1854 a woman who'd been hiding on the Kentucky bluffs overlooking the Ohio River found passage over the water to the free state of Indiana. Sympathetic Hoosiers hid her under hay stacks and brush heaps. Delia Webster had, declared the Madison Courier, "escaped on the 'underground railroad', vanished, vamoosed…"

"Running Down Slaves With Dogs"

Delia was not a fugitive slave but a notorious "negro stealer." After serving time in a Kentucky prison, she had purchased a Kentucky farm for a station on the Underground Railroad---an act defying both prudence and the Kentucky authorities. She was, "a very bold and defiant kind of woman, without a spark of feminine modesty," criticized the Louisville Democrat.

Delia Ann Webster (1817-1876)
about the time of the
 end of the Civil War

Delia Webster's life story with its cliff-hanging moments and daring escapes reads like a melodrama. Like all melodramas, the story omits character shading to help us understand her motives and emotions.

Webster never fit the stereotype of 
 New England abolitionist illustrated in 
Albert D. Richardson's Beyond the Mississippi

At 26 years of age she traveled from her Vermont home to Kentucky to teach. Delia apparently planned to lead a double life spiriting runaway slaves to safety as she taught their owners' children.


Much of her Underground Railroad activity remains secret. Her best documented escapade, helping the Lewis & Harriet Hayden family in 1844, is known only because she and co-conspirator Calvin Fairbank were arrested, convicted and jailed in the Kentucky Penitentiary. Sentenced to two years, Delia served about six weeks as the prison's only female inmate. Her 1845 pardon has been attributed to her charm. She captivated Warden Newton Craig and his wife Lucy.


Freed and famous, Delia returned to Vermont and published a book, an unreliable account of the Haydens' escape in answer to "low innuendoes and foul detraction."


After four years she again traveled South, settling in Madison, Indiana, a town that was by accident of geography an important junction of the Underground Railroad.

Routes for runaways from the Ohio River south of 
Indiana and Ohio up to Michigan and Canada.
The arrow points to Madison.

Just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, Madison was perched between the river and a vertical slope covered with an unruly woodland where escapees could hide out in a forest of ridges and hollows. Delia is rumored to have helped many.

Madison Star by Jean Stanclift

Madison was divided between slavery's supporters and freedom's advocates.The notorious abolitionist was unwelcome even before she scandalized Madison's citizens by carrying on a very public relationship with the married Kentucky warden who'd signed her pardon.

 Kentucky's bluffs across the Ohio River from 
Madison, Indiana today. It's said that Madison knew when 
Kentucky vigilantes were raiding Delia's farm
 by the glow of burning outbuildings on the ridge.

After a few years, Delia wearied of waiting for fugitives to come to her and borrowed money from Warden Craig to buy farmland on the Kentucky plateau opposite Madison, a perfect temporary refuge for runaways on the first leg of the journey. Kentucky's slaveholders had only circumstantial evidence of her help with escapes. With Delia Webster living in Trimble County, the slave population declined.

By 1854 affection between warden and ex-prisoner faded. Delia, long on nerve but short on discretion, published Craig's letters hoping to ruin his career. He retaliated by reviving the ten-year-old case against her for Harriet Hayden's rescue. (She'd served time only for helping Lewis Hayden.)

Delia's much-publicized escape from her second Kentucky trial into the hills behind Madison eventually landed her in the city's jail, but Indiana courts set her free, refusing to return her. Delia realized Kentucky's danger and never crossed the river again.

Stevens House, Vergennes, Vermont

She went home to New England and spent the time before the Civil War writing and lecturing about her exploits and the evils of slavery.


DELIA WEBSTER AGAIN.
Her 1854 escape to Indiana received a good deal of newspaper coverage.

See an article in the New York Times here:


This photograph of Delia and her sisters in their forties and fifties gives a glimpse of Delia's theatrical personality. Her sisters have dressed their hair in up-to-date style with center parts but Delia wears a fringe (bangs) with old-fashioned sausage curls, perhaps to recapture the look of her heyday in the 1840s. She's painted her lips and cheeks. She might have indulged in the plastic surgery of the era, having wax injected under her skin, as she bears little resemblance to her pleasantly aging sisters.

Madison Star by Dustin Cecil

Delia lived into her mid eighties, dying in Des Moines in 1904, eccentric and mysterious to the end.

Madison Star by Dustin Cecil

Make a Quilt a Month
Set four Madison Stars side by side to make a small wall quilt. Keep the fabric in the center pinwheel the same but vary the colors in each block to create a sparkling quartet. Add a 2-inch finished inner border and a 4" finished outer border for a 36" square quilt.



What We Can Learn About the Underground Railroad from Delia Webster's Story.

Assisting escaping slaves was dangerous work. Agents were arrested and jailed by Southern authorities and occasionally executed by vigilantes. Delia served only six weeks for helping Lewis Hayden but Calvin Fairbank spent 17 years in confinement for two separate convictions.


Marker in Trimble County, Kentucky

Links to More Information:

You can read Delia Webster's account of her trial for aiding the Haydens in her pamphlet:
Kentucky jurisprudence: a history of the trial of Miss Delia A. Webster at Lexington, Kentucky, Dec'r 17-21, 1844 before the Hon. Richard Buckner on a charge of aiding slaves to escape from that commonwealth, with miscellaneous remarks, including her views on American slavery / written by herself. 
Click here to see it at the Kentucky Digital Library.
http://kdl.kyvl.org/catalog/xt7mcv4bpd7x_7?

She described the escape rather unreliably and included trial transcripts and accounts of her imprisonment and pardon. She later claimed her father forced her to lie about the Haydens' escape. 

Her anti-slavery partner also wrote a memoir. Click here to read it at the Internet Archive:
Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times: How He "Fought the Good Fight" to Prepare "the Way."
https://archive.org/details/durringslavery00fairrich

Lewis and Harriet Hayden wound up in Boston after Webster and Fairbank got them out of Kentucky. See a picture of their Boston house and read about their activities in the fight for freedom by clicking on this link:

Find Out More In Print
For much more about Delia Webster's story see Randolph Paul Runyon's biography, Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996). For a review of the book from H-Net Online click on this link:

18 comments:

  1. That was a wonderful post to read and enjoyed hearing about her life and how she helped others, really brings the blocks to life.

    Debbie

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  2. What an interesting story about a remarkable woman. I'll definitely be following up on some of your links.

    And.. I love that quilt block!

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  3. I love all the blocks and the blog. I am having a hard time with the templates. The statement "This dark sewing line should measure 3 1/2" to match up to square A"...which dark sewing line? I think I know, but Square A is 4" so why would the sewing line be 3 1/2"? Please help.

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  4. Hi Barbara,
    I love doing this BOM, it's so exciting !! I've already done the 4 left blocks, it's real pleasure !
    But this time I have a question about the block : I don't understand, how it is possible that triangle B is bigger than the A square. If A mesures 4", 12"- 2X4"(the 2 corners square) =4"
    how long is the D basis ?
    Thanks a lot for your help !

    Nadège

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  5. I am having trouble with printing out the template to the right size this time. I am using Windows 8.1. I have made all of the Civil War blocks with template with no previous problems. I wonder what I can do differently to get this printed to the right size. Any ideas that might help?

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  6. I too cannot get the print to work to match the line.

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  7. I was having some issues with the template as well, but figured it out. Hope this helps:
    1. Create a new Microsoft Word document and change the margins to 0.25" under Page Layout.
    2. Right click on the template picture in the blog post and save on your desktop.
    3. From your Word Document insert this saved picture.
    4. To get the picture to be the right size, I had to change the vertical height to 10". The width should change automatically and proportionally to 7.73". (You do this on the right hand side of the "Picture Tools" toolbar that appears after you've clicked on the picture in your document)
    5. When I printed this document the solid line measured 3.5" as described.

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  8. Thanks, Rachel! This tip worked really well. I am still not sure I understand the dimensions, but I have a 3 1/2" line so I am going to give a go!

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  9. Phew! Glad it worked for someone else.

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  10. Myself and two of my friends are having a terrible time with this block.
    I read Rachel's info but am not that computer savy. I would love it if an actual templet size could be printed to cut out. I am not all that good at paper piecing eaither.
    Lynn

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  11. Thank you Rachael, I tried again and followed your instructions step by step. I got it, thanks so much.

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  12. Madison star was not made in Ladies Album fabrics. I was following those blocks exactly, and wish to go on in that manner. Can you make one in my fabric? Thanks, Jane A.

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  13. Thanks Rachael, your tip worked really well, I've printed it out in case I need it in the future. Off to make my block now.

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  14. No problem everyone! I also made a paper piecing pattern if you'd like to use foundation paper piecing for the whole block. This pattern does have a couple more seams than the original pattern, but no y-seams (see the picture of my block to get the idea). I'll be happy to email to anyone, just email with the request at aggierachael@gmail.com.

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  15. Had a nightmare with this BOM, until I recut the outer units and removed the need for Y seams. But got there in the end - just love the blocks, and am fascinated by the history.
    Mrs Stitches

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  16. Wow. So dismissive of this brave lady's accomplishments during a time when women weren't business women, let alone trying to help slaves escape to freedom. As for the comments about her hair and her facial features, I can only say, how very petty this is. This lady actually risked her life to help people and you are discussing her appearance. If you happen to see a picture of her relative, the lexicographer & noted statesman, Noah Webster,when he was young, you will see the sake facial bone structure. For more factual info, I suggest folks read the books by Runyon and Eisan. Also, copies of actual newspaper accounts can be found, along with other genealogy information etc., about Delia and her family. The Websters arrived in the colonies on the 1630s, and John Webster would become a Connecticut Colonial Governor and founder of Hartford, Ct. The lexicographer, Noah Webster is also family. A complete genealogy from the 1630s to appx. 1900, was published in 1910. Delia was an accomplished artist, she went to Kentucky to teach art at the Lexington Female Academy and would become a founder and manager of the school when her co-founders became ill and had to leave the area. Delia socialized with her student's parents and probably gained information to help slaves escape the area. Her primary focus seemed to be painting, she apparently had no interest in quilting. Neither of the books about her mention any of this quilting in relation to signs and slaves escaping. This Madison Star is a very nice tribute to her. Obviously Delia wanted to be freed from the Kentucky Penitentiary and probably wasn't bothered by telling "fibs" to convince folks to help her gain a pardon. Remember she's the one having her reputation trashed in nationwide newspapers. Newton Craig became a very rich man, as he personally profitted from the prisoners forced labor, with such things as furniture making. Craig was married to his cousin, Lucy Craig. Newton wrote many "love letters" to Delia, but obviously she rejected his advances. To the point of having these letters published, despite how they might make her look. This caused Craig to loose an election, and his very profitable position as penitentiary warden. He apparently wanted revenge and numerous attempts and threats were made against Delia, including that she would be "assassinated." Along with his slave owning friends in Trimble County, they succeeded in burning and destroying everything Delia owned, including materials for the school for poor whites and black children she intended to build. Delia's reward for helping people would be an unmarked grave. As of this date, her family is attempting to fund a grave marker for this brave lady. A link to this, and more information can be found on her Facebook page, "Delia Webster, Ugrr, Abolitionist."

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  17. Hi Barbara,
    I am working on a Facebook post for the Kentucky Historical Society about Delia Webster. I would like to include a couple of photos from your blog and of course I would credit your site with the information. Let me know if you approve. I will also include a link to your blog.
    Best,

    Rachel Herrington
    Learning Services Interim
    Kentucky Historical Society
    100 W. Broadway │ Frankfort, KY 40601
    502-564-1792 ext. 4411
    history.ky.gov

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  18. Thank you for your heartfelt telling of the Delia Webster story. They have a statue in front of the NY Stock Exchange called Fearless Girl. She is a bit new but is rapidly becoming a world icon. Google her name and you’’ll see her. Delia was Fearless Girl, a one-of-a-kind woman in her time. To paraphrase Mark Twain, though, the reports of Delia’s death (in 1876) have been greatly exaggerated. She died in Des Moines, Iowa on January 19, 1904 at age 86. After being unmarked for 116 years, a family member has placed an appropriate marker on her grave in historic Woodland Cemetery in Des Moines. Hopefully her final resting place will now become a shrine to her life, times, and indomitable courage.

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