Hopkins Family Trials & Troubles

 Private Charles Sanford Hopkins.  

Tinted salt-print photograph.

Virginia Historical Society 2012.109.1

Charles Sanford Hopkins was a member of the 5th New York Volunteer Infantry, known as Duryea’s Zouaves.  The Virginia Historical Society received this portrait of Hopkins with his Zouave uniform, letters and other personal effects in a 2012 gift.

His parents Charles Hopkins and Elizabeth Sanford Jennings Hopkins kept the package of his belongings after their son died of pneumonia at Chesapeake General Hospital in Hampton, Virginia, on April 28, 1862.

The War was exceptionally miserable for the Hopkinses. Charles was their second son to die. His brother William, a member of New York's 48th Infantry died 6 months earlier at Hilton Head of a similar ailment. Baby Emma died at 18 months in 1864.

Elizabeth seems to have given birth to nine children. Only one survived beyond the age of 25.

Daughter Eliza Willis Hopkins Hutchinson (1840-1930) lived to be 80. Elizabeth died in 1904 at 80 also. Many family members are buried in the Sea View Cemetery in Suffolk County, New York.

Why this one story out of many sad tales of Civil War mothers?  Elizabeth Jennings Hopkins left a quilt, one block of which inspired the July Yankee Diary block.

Album Quilt

Elizabeth Sanford Jennings Hopkins, American, 1824-1904

Denver Art Museum

http://denverartmuseum.org/edu/object/album-quilt

Elizabeth Jennings was born in Fairfield, Connecticut and married Charles Hopkins in 1841.

They lived in Port Jefferson on Long Island, New York. I spent my younger years near Huntington, not far from Port Jefferson. so I am always interested in Long Island album quilts.

Elizabeth's seems to be the only signature on the quilt.

She may have made all the blocks. Her star with a heart block above.

On the left a clock shelf and a glass-fronted clock

with a floral painting.

References to sailing and shipbuilding, the industries of Port Jefferson in the 19th century: A sailboat and light house, mariner's compass and a sea gull perhaps.

Port Jefferson in the early 20th century

So much promise in a life before the beginning of the Civil War; so much loss after.

See more about son Charles's uniform here:
https://vahistorical.wordpress.com/2013/04/02/zouave-fever-at-the-vhs/

More on Duryea's Zouaves

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2015/11/stolen-quilt-for-jefferson-davis.html

And quilts with zouaves

http://www.midwestliving.com/blog/travel/a-story-told-thread-and-cloth/

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/03/homefront-and-battlefield-exhibit.html

The Sea View graveyard

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=50965662

Yankee Diary 7: Valentine for Noah Clarke's Brother

Yankee Diary 7: Valentine for

 Noah Clarke's Brother by Becky Brown

9" Finished Block

From Carrie's diary, Fall, 1860. Sunday.

"Frankie Richardson asked me to go with her to teach a class in the colored Sunday School on Chapel Street this afternoon. I asked Grandmother if I could go and she said she never noticed that I was particularly interested in the colored race and she said she thought I only wanted an excuse to get out for a walk Sunday afternoon. However, she said I could go just this once. "

The Boy's School, The Canandaigua Academy

Seventeen-year-old Carrie met her future husband Edmund C. Clarke as she was walking by the Canandaigua Academy on Fort Hill Road.

"When we got up as far as the Academy, Mr. Noah T. Clarke's brother, who is one of the teachers, came out and Frank said he led the singing at the Sunday School and she said she would give me an introduction to him so he walked up with us and home again. Grandmother said that when she saw him opening the gate for me, she understood my zeal in missionary work.

Abigail Field Beals

" 'The dear little lady,' as we often call her, has always been noted for her keen discernment and wonderful sagacity and  loses none of it as she advances in years. Some one asked Anna the other day if her Grandmother retained all her faculties and Anna said, 'Yes, indeed, to an alarming degree.'

 "...I had the same company home from church in the evening."

Edmund at right was the youngest of eight children. 

Older brothers William Warner Clarke

and Noah Turner Clarke were 17 and 8 

when he was born. 

Noah (center) was Principal at the Canandaigua Academy.

Was it all a set-up? Did Frankie and Carrie conspire to meet the Sunday School singing teacher? Perhaps Frankie and Mr. Clarke's brother were the conspirators. Carrie usually referred to Edmund C. Clarke as Mr. Noah T. Clarke's brother in her diary---a joke she must have enjoyed.

"March 4, 1861. I told Grandfather that I had an invitation to the lecture (at Bemis Hall) and he asked me who from. I told him from Mr Noah T. Clarke's brother. He did not make the least objection and I was awfully glad, because he has asked me to the whole course."

The  Valentine Block

Star with reverse appliqued heart by Barbara Brackman

Stars with hearts in reverse or positive applique were included in the early album quilts in New York and New Jersey.

From the New Jersey Project and the Quilt Index

Sprouting star from a New York album by

Elizabeth Sanford Jennings Hopkins. Collection of the Denver Art Museum.

http://denverartmuseum.org/edu/object/album-quilt

Block from the New Jersey Project-

a star in a sprouting star

Quilt dated 1853 in the collection

of the Lambertville Historical Society.

New Jersey Project

Denniele Bohannon's star with reverse applique heart

stitched on the machine.

Cutting a 9" Finished Block

A - Cut 4 squares 2-3/4"
B - Cut 1 square 5-3/4". Cut with 2 diagonal cuts to make 4 triangles. You need 4 triangles.

C - Cut 4 squares 3-1/8". Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 8 triangles.

D - Cut 1 square 5"

The Heart

To Print:

• Create a word file or a new empty JPG file. 
• Click on the image above. 
• Right click on it and save it to your file. 
• Print that file. Check to be sure the box line is 4-1/2". 
• Add seam allowances when you cut the heart.

Applique the heart in center square D. If you want to do reverse applique scroll down for instructions for Reverse Applique.

Becky's center heart appliqued atop the green.

Then piece the block.

Piece the 9" Finished Block

Reverse Applique Instructions

Quilters used reverse applique quite a bit in Carrie's day. One benefit is you could put a white heart in a red square and have no shadow behind it.

Draw the heart on a 4" square of freezer paper (paper side)

Cut the heart out of the center of the paper.

Press the freezer paper to the reverse of Square D.

Cut the heart out of the fabric leaving a seam allowance.

My seam allowance is a scant 1/4"

Snip all the inside curves about every 1-1/2".

Glue the seam allowance to the back of the freezer paper.

Place a piece of background fabric behind the heart.
Glue or baste it in place.
Applique the reverse heart.
Remove the freezer paper.
Trim the white fabric away so you don't have to quilt through it.

Reverse applique from an 1857 album

You might want to ink a sentiment in the center of the heart.

This would also be a good place for your name and the year.

Lincoln's Monument Quilt Pattern

A Monument Quilt

from Julie Silber's Inventory

http://juliesilberquilts.com/

Newspapers and magazine offered Exchange columns in which readers offered to trade or sell items, for example advertising cards for yard goods.

In 1889 Maria J. Hains wrote the National Tribune that she'd send readers a quilt pattern called Lincoln's Monument for 25 cents. Hains of Osborn, Missouri, mentioned she was the invalid wife of a veteran of the 75th Indiana.

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=41680999

Her husband may have been Corporal Adam Haines, Company K of the 75th Indiana Infantry, who is buried in Osborn, east of St Joseph, Missouri.

Maria's 1889 ad in the National Tribune, the newspaper for Union veterans in the G.A.R., might have resulted in some patterns sold and quilts made, but what the pattern looked like is unknown

Garfield's Monument,

possibly from Farm & Home, early 1880s

Other monument designs from the time period may have been similar. The published names with pictures that I've found memorialized Presidents Grant and Garfield who died in 1885 and 1881.

Garfield's Monument #136 from the Ladies Art Company

about 1890

Grant's Monument Quilt Block,

source unknown.

More monument quilts:
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/09/intepreting-old-patterns.html
http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/10/not-so-current-events.html

Union Basket Blocks

Terry says she's sorry she ever thought about

doing a pieced "Union" for Block 5.

But I'm glad she did. It looks good.

ColvinKiwi pieced hers too.

Jeanne inked her word.

She says: "Piecing, applique, inking, inserted segments ... it's good for me to do hard stuff :)"

Danice's looks appliqued.

And Vrooman's Quilts is appliqued and embroidered?

She's thinking about where to put the flag.

A challenge to build character (and skills).
Block 7 next week.

Feed the Hungry Quilt

Silk log cabin quilt in the collection of the 

Missouri History Museum.

It's hard to see but letters stitched in sequins on the diagonal across the blocks read:

"Feed the Hungry"

http://collections.mohistory.org/resource/84963

The catalog copy:
"Log Cabin style quilt made in Lexington, Missouri, for a Methodist-Episcopal church bazaar to raise money for families of ex-Confederate soldiers from the Civil War. Spelled out across the front of the quilt is a reminder to parishioners to “FEED THE HUNGRY” in the wake of a devastating war that left families impoverished."

In the center of most blocks is a butterfly, which was cut

from a piece of silk once a dress belonging to 

Carolyn Godbey, according to Paula Calvin & Deborah Deacon's book 

American Women Artists in Wartime

With an unusual name like Godbey it's not hard to find a little about Caroline's life. 

Caroline Smith (seated) and her older sister Lavinia Smith,

early 1860s perhaps.

Caroline Malvina Smith Godbey (1837-1911) was the wife of Methodist minister William Clinton Godbey. She came from a family of Methodist ministers, originally from Kentucky, as did her husband. They married in Missouri in December 28, 1862.  At least two of Caroline's children also grew up to be Methodist ministers, one rather well known in his day. Allen H. Godbey was a faculty member at Duke University. 

During the Civil War Methodism in Missouri was divided by sectionalism and violence that is hard to believe in people purporting to be religious. The Godbey's were affiliated with the Methodist- Episcopal Church, South. Three M-E South ministers Thomas Glanville, Edwin Robinson and Samuel Steel Headlee were killed in the factional fighting.

Caroline and her husband lived in Lexington in the decades after the Civil War when the quilt was thought to have been made. Her fourth child Victor Ammeil was born in Lexington in 1868. 

Reverend W. C. Godbey is recorded as living in Lexington and teaching at the Central Female College that was founded there in 1869. At some point he was chaplain of the State Penitentiary in Jefferson City.  In 1879 the family moved to Morrisville, Missouri, where William Godbey became 

President of the Morrisville Institute, later Morrisville College, another Methodist-Episcopal Church, South, school. 

Morrisville College about 1910

Morrisville is north of Springfield.

The quilt was donated with the story that it was sold at a Methodist-Episcopal Church bazaar in Lexington in 1866, although this date seems a little early for a silk log cabin. Similar quilts date to the 1880s when silk was relatively inexpensive. I was hoping to find more about the Lexington church bazaar in local newspapers but came up with nothing. It may be that the quilt was actually made in Morrisville at a later date.

I did, however, find out why Carrie Smith Godbey is not buried with her husband. She is buried in Morrisville and her Find-A-Grave file is quite complete, except for mention of his grave.

https://www.findagrave.com/cgi-bin/fg.cgi?page=gr&GRid=27659265

The answer seems to be that he disappeared in disgrace in 1886.

The Butler Missouri Weekly Times showed the family no mercy.

"Another Minister Skips

The Rev. Dr. Godbey Confesses Illicit Relations with Two Young Women

The most startling and sensational revelations have been made at Morrisville...

"None of the material facts in the case leaked out until today when it was learned that the Rev. Godbey came to this city one week ago last Monday and boarded a train on the Frisco road going to parts unknown. The cause of the sudden departure is alleged criminal intimacy with young lady students regarding which it is reported that he made a full confession to his wife just before he left."
The McFarland sisters did not board at the school but "kept their own house"..."As he was at the head of the school and old enough to have been the father of the young women, nothing was thought of this until rather recently, when Mrs. Godbey by some means got an inkling of her husband's infidelity, and he made a clean breast of the matter to her and then skipped out."

Read the "startling and sensational" story in the Butler Weekly Times here:

http://chroniclingamerica.loc.gov/lccn/sn89066489/1886-04-14/ed-1/seq-4/#date1=1789&index=5&rows=20&searchType=advanced&language=&sequence=0&words=Godbey&proxdistance=5&date2=1924&ortext=godbey&proxtext=&phrasetext=&andtext=&dateFilterType=yearRange&page=1

And here's a little more:

"The charges of immoral conduct and adultery were true....

expelled from the conference and the ministry....

his name dropped from the church record...."

So all we can say to Carrie is we are sorry for her troubles. She stayed on in Morrisville where the scandal occurred and we hope she got on with her life (as we advise today.)

As far as the quilt made from her butterfly dress, it was donated to the museum in memory of the Methodist ministers murdered during the Civil War.