Block #6: Salem
by Jean Stanclift
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 May, 1854 a sixteen-year-old school girl in Salem,
Massachusetts sat down with her diary:
“Did not intend to write this evening, but have just heard of something which is worth recording….Another fugitive from bondage has been arrested….I can only hope and pray most earnestly that Boston will not again disgrace herself by sending him back to a bondage worse than death…”
Charlotte Forten Grimké (1837-1914) about
the time of her marriage in 1878
Charlotte Forten wrote about Anthony Burns, an escaped slave
who had lived as a free man in nearby Boston
for several months before he was arrested by slave catchers aided by local
authorities. During that week Charlotte
described growing outrage at Burns’s imprisonment in the heart of antislavery Massachusetts .
The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act strengthened cooperation between slave states and free, obligating police, courts, the Army and private citizens in any state to assist slave owners in reclaiming their human property. It also set up a separate court system for blacks and set aside any rights to evidence a black person might claim. A slave owner’s statement was the only testimony necessary to send one into bondage.
The 1850 Fugitive Slave Act strengthened cooperation between slave states and free, obligating police, courts, the Army and private citizens in any state to assist slave owners in reclaiming their human property. It also set up a separate court system for blacks and set aside any rights to evidence a black person might claim. A slave owner’s statement was the only testimony necessary to send one into bondage.
Salem Star by Dustin Cecil
On Friday evening, while most of Boston ’s attention focused on a protest
meeting at Faneuil Hall, several men stormed the courthouse in a vain attempt
to free Burns, leaving a Deputy Marshal bleeding to death.
On the day Burns was marched through the city streets to board a ship for Virginia, Charlotte only mentioned it. “I can write no more. A cloud seems hanging over me, over all our persecuted race, which nothing can dispel.”
On the day Burns was marched through the city streets to board a ship for Virginia, Charlotte only mentioned it. “I can write no more. A cloud seems hanging over me, over all our persecuted race, which nothing can dispel.”
The Burns Affair, as it became known, was one more rent in
the fabric of national unity as Northerners became increasingly frustrated with
a legal system that favored the slave owner.
Charlotte Forten was witness to many other events in the late 1850s that led to the Civil War. As a free black girl growing into womanhood she felt obligated to devote her time to the abolitionist cause. A few weeks after Burns’s arrest a friend overhearing her conversation, “said she believed that we never talked of or read anything but Anti-Slavery....”
Charlotte Forten was witness to many other events in the late 1850s that led to the Civil War. As a free black girl growing into womanhood she felt obligated to devote her time to the abolitionist cause. A few weeks after Burns’s arrest a friend overhearing her conversation, “said she believed that we never talked of or read anything but Anti-Slavery....”
Charlotte's diary is in the collection of Howard University
Her diary recorded her studies, her friends and her
reading, but primarily her attendance at antislavery events, lectures,
meetings, sewing circles, and fundraisers. While attending Salem ’s Higginson school as the only black student, she boarded
with the Remond family, important antislavery advocates whose home was a
gathering place for local and visiting activists.
Charlotte’s hostess had been active in forming the Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1832, one of over 100 antislavery organizations in Massachusetts in that decade.
Salem
Sarah Parker Remond offered to board Charlotte
so she could get an education in Salem. Charlotte's hometown
Philadelphia schools were closed to black girls.
The Salem Gazette announces a fundraising fair by the Salem
Female Anti-Slavery Society in 1837.
"Those who wish to contribute articles for this Sale are requested to leave them at
Mr. Wm. Phelps...." Quilts, perhaps????
by Becky Brown
Salem in 1854, about the time Charlotte arrived
Although New England ’s
antislavery army lost the battle to prevent the United States Army from
returning Burns to Virginia ,
they formed the support troops in the long-term war against slavery. Girls like
Charlotte
contributed by sewing for the annual fairs. A few weeks before the 1854
Christmas fundraiser she wrote:
“Went to a sewing party, or ‘bee’ as the New Englanders call it---Such parties possess not the slightest attraction for me, unless they are for the anti-slavery fair. Then I always feel it both a duty and a pleasure to go.”
Handmade needle case of calico printed with an antislavery motto and image.
Collection of the Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts.
The money earned at tables selling
penwipers, pincushions, embroidered slippers and quilts added to the balance
sheets carefully kept by dedicated treasurers. Few account books survive
because they were so carefully kept that they could provide excellent evidence of conspiracies to deprive slave
owners of their legal property.
Once the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act imposed a thousand dollar fine on anyone anywhere assisting a runaway, the Underground Railroad destroyed its paper trail. The surviving ledger above give a glimpse of how the organizations spent the money so earnestly raised by women like Charlotte. Cash was disbursed to attorneys who defended resisters, to doctors who treated sick fugitives, to landlords who rented rooms to hide them and to newspapers publishing advertisements looking for landlords willing to provide shelter.
Money went to printers for copies of antislavery speeches and posters warning of slave hunters. Funds paid for train fare and carriage rental to carry people north and for $3 cash grants---pocket money for the first few weeks inCanada .
Account book of the Boston Vigilance Committee, 1857,
lists expenses for fuel to keep fugitives warm, passage to Toronto
for one and postage for petitions.
Once the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act imposed a thousand dollar fine on anyone anywhere assisting a runaway, the Underground Railroad destroyed its paper trail. The surviving ledger above give a glimpse of how the organizations spent the money so earnestly raised by women like Charlotte. Cash was disbursed to attorneys who defended resisters, to doctors who treated sick fugitives, to landlords who rented rooms to hide them and to newspapers publishing advertisements looking for landlords willing to provide shelter.
Money went to printers for copies of antislavery speeches and posters warning of slave hunters. Funds paid for train fare and carriage rental to carry people north and for $3 cash grants---pocket money for the first few weeks in
In the 1830s the women of the Forten and Remond families
were among the first females to see themselves as active agents in social
change. Charlotte
continued in their footsteps for the rest of her life. When the Civil War began
she traveled south to teach freed slaves in South Carolina and after the War worked for
the Treasury Department in Washington
where she married Reverend Francis J. Grimké. She died in 1914, lauded as an
exemplary minister’s wife and a poet, writer and lecturer in her own right.
Salem
Salem Star is a new way of looking at traditional quilt design to recall the old colonial town on the
Massachusetts coast. By 1850 Salem was home to the state’s third largest African-American community.
Salem Star is a new way of looking at traditional quilt design to recall the old colonial town on the
Massachusetts coast. By 1850 Salem was home to the state’s third largest African-American community.
What We Can Learn About the Underground Railroad from Charlotte
Forten Grimké's Story
The Underground Railroad was not an all-volunteer
organization. Reading the ledger of Boston ’s Vigilance Committee makes us aware that wages,
rents, and fees were paid to people willing to defend and care for fugitives. A
good deal of that money was raised by women, particularly at the Ladies'
Fairs.
Links:
See selections from the diaries at the National Humanities Center:
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/identity/text3/charlottefortenjournal.pdf
http://nationalhumanitiescenter.org/pds/maai/identity/text3/charlottefortenjournal.pdf
To read the account book of the Boston Vigilance Committee,
now in the collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society, click on this
link:
Click on the scan of the document as well as both tables.
You’ll note many disbursements to Lewis Hayden, an important Boston agent in the Underground Railroad. You
may recall that it was the escape of Hayden and his family that caused the
imprisonment of Delia Webster and Calvin Fairbank described in issue # 5. Lewis
Hayden’s activism during the 1850s must have been some consolation to Fairbank who spent those years
in a Kentucky
prison for helping him.
Unidentified woman photographed in Salem about 1865
from the collection of the Library of Congress.
Charlotte Forten Grimke’s diaries
have been published in several forms. The most comprehensive is edited by
Brenda Stevenson: Journals of Charlotte
L. Forten Grimke. (Schomberg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women
Writers. Oxford University
Christy Steel, Kerry Graves and
Suzanne L. Bunkers have edited a version for young children of the events in
the exciting year of 1854. A Free Black
Girl Before the Civil War: The Diary of Charlotte Forten, 1854. (Mankato,
Minnesota: Blue Earth Books 1999)
Ray Allen Billington published selections from her diaries
in The Journal of
Charlotte Forten: a Free Negro in the Slave Era. (New York: Norton,
1953).
Salem Star
81" x 81"
Make a Quilt a Month
Sash 25 Salem Stars to make an 81" by 81" bed
sized quilt. The sashing and corner stones finish to 1 1/2" just like
piece A (cut 2"). The blue outer border finishes to 6" (cut 6-1/2"). Recolor the block with
small yellow squares and you'll get a strong diagonal grid.
UPDATE: Here's Dustin's ticking version.
