Block # 8 in Threads of Memory:
Jacksonville
In 1838 a girl living in Jacksonville , Illinois free state , Emily Logan and her brother Robert were treated as slaves by Elizabeth and Porter Clay. The Kentucky-born children were ignorant of their murky legal status.
Freed children during the Civil War.
Photo sold at Cowan's Auctions, 2008.
Abraham Lincoln
Illinois lawyers like Abraham Lincoln might
argue (and 
Jacksonville is the yellow star, west of Springfield, Illinois
with Kentucky in the lower right
Elizabeth Logan Hardin Clay and her second husband brought
the Logan
children with them to the western Illinois
town of Jacksonville ,
which attracted a "considerable admixture of people," remembered an
early settler. "A very large and influential part of the population was
made up of Kentuckyens having a strong proslavery bias." Many of those
Kentuckians were kin to Elizabeth Clay's first husband Martin Davis Hardin, a
third cousin to Mary Todd Lincoln's family.
Martin Davis Hardin
Elizabeth's second husband Porter Clay was politician Henry Clay's youngest brother.
Jacksonville Star by Becky Brown in Ladies' Album prints
The Porter/Clay house, drawn in 1935,
from the Library of Congress
Illinois College still stands
Abraham Lincoln’s future law partner and biographer William
Herndon attended Illinois
College Jacksonville ’s
population, their antislavery notions gave the town a reputation as a radical
outpost.
Mid-19th-century view of the Opera House
from the collection of the New York Public Library
In a county history published fifty years later, several of
the "Old-Time Abolitionists" recalled the town's early years.
Although they might be remembered as heroes at the end of the century, in the 1830s and '40s antislavery activists were "the
most hated and despised of men….Once when…a noted preacher was addressing us at
the Congregational Church, some malicious person threw a black rag baby
straight at his head."
Charlie King, redeemed from slavery
about 1862. Images of Charlie and his
sister Alice were sold to fund the anti-slavery cause.
After two years in Illinois Emily and Robert had talked to
enough abolitionists to believe they could walk away from the Clay household.
When the Clays realized their intentions they made plans to ship them toKentucky . The children
escaped into "Africa" ---the local name for Jacksonville's free black community.
The Porter/Clay house photographed in 1935
from the Library of Congress
When the Clays realized their intentions they made plans to ship them to
Alice King
One of the New Englanders remembered the fury of the three
angry men who knocked at the door of a neighbor "demanding to know the
whereabouts of Bob and Emily Logan." Despite the threats,
"courage…suddenly possessed the mind of the man who was not afraid to do
right, and the early callers had to go elsewhere." But the men soon found
Robert and shuttled him to a boat on the Mississippi River
heading south. He disappeared into the slave state of Missouri . A Clay relative named Marcus Chinn
and another man were indicted for kidnapping Robert, but the courts of Morgan County
Elihu Wolcott (1784 - 1858) as a young man.
He was in his fifties when he helped the Logans
Emily sought shelter with several of the town's
abolitionists, among them Connecticut-born Elihu Wolcott who sued for her
freedom in her name. The Clays transferred her ownership to Chinn and the case
of Emily Logan, a woman of color, vs.
Marcus A. Chinn languished in the Morgan County Sangamon County
The dollar damages were a token and so, unfortunately, was
the case. African-Americans in Illinois
remained in legal limbo under the state's "Black Laws" until the end of the
Civil War.
Today Emily Logan is remembered primarily as a case name.
Re-enactors in Jacksonville
tell her story in Underground Railroad tours of the town's historic houses, but
we know little about her life after 1840. She represents an important---if
neglected---chapter in the story of freedom's fight. African-Americans sued
their owners and the state for relief from slavery. Although most lost their
legal fights and those who did win rarely established positive precedents,
their ambition to use the law was a step in developing methods of peaceful
resistance.
Jacksonville Star by Jean Stanclift
Jacksonville Star is a new block featuring a traditional
nine-patch star with elongated points. The square inside a square inside a
square can recall the layers of different cultures in a town with so diverse a
population.
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:
Jacksonville Star by Becky Brown
Becky added seams and fussy-cut her center square A.
What We Can Learn About the Underground Railroad from Emily Logan's Story
Today we tend to recall the pre-Civil War United States as two regions: free states and slave states. This neat dichotomy of good and evil allows us to forget the gray areas where "Black Laws" demeaned African-Americans. The Underground Railroad had to operate within a free state like Illinois because Southern immigrants brazenly brought their slaves with them.
Jacksonville Star
Make a Quilt a Month
For the side triangles cut 2 squares 18-1/4". Cut each into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts.
For the corner triangles cut 2 squares 9-3/8". Cut each into 2 triangles with a diagonal cut.
Read more about slavery in Jacksonville in Mark Steiner's Abolitionists and Escaped Slaves in Jacksonville:
