Yankee Diary 8: A Wartime Wedding & Checkerboard Strips

Becky's top half in progress

with the checkerboard filler blocks.

Yankee Diary #8

  A Wartime Wedding

It was silly to plan the checkerboard filler for anything but the last month but this error in planning will give you an easy month and time to catch up on other blocks.

Lyn's using traditional colors from 

Hope's Journey by Betsy Chutchian. 

"A pretty strong colour palette," says Lyn.

You might want to choose your fabrics now and cut the squares to save for the final set. Or you can start setting the blocks now. We still have four blocks to go.

Denniele's Checkerboard Filler

Denniele's whole quilt in progress.

This will finish to "42" x 54".

She posts pictures on her Facebook page LouannaMary Quilt Design.

https://www.facebook.com/louannamaryquiltdesign/

A wedding in camp, 1863 from Harper's Weekly

From Carrie's Diary. March 26, 1862. 

"I have been up at Laura Chapin's from ten o'clock in the morning until ten at night, finishing Jennie Howell's bed quilt, as she is to be married very soon. Almost all of the girls were there. We finished it at 8 p.m. and when we took it off the frames we gave three cheers.

The Thaddeus Chapin House where they finished Jennie's quilt in 1862. 

"Some of the youth of the village came up to inspect our handiwork and see us home. Before we went Julia Phelps sang and played on the guitar and Captain Barry also sang and we all sang together, 'O! Columbia, the gem of the ocean, three cheers for the red, white and blue.' "

Jennie's house and her father's law office in Canandaigua

Four quilts survive that were made by the women in Carrie's society, although the one meant for Jennie Howell Hazard is not accounted for.

A collage of items in the Ontario Repository and Messenger in April, 1862

Jane E. Howell, Carrie's close friend Jennie, married John R. Hazard of Buffalo in a red, white and blue ceremony. The newspaper reviewed the "Patriotic Wedding" with a pun on the groom's name.

"Love is victorious in the North...The sacred old national colors floated in their ancient beauty. Snowy-purity was the central attractions with crimson splendor on one side and azure glory on the other...The most charming fact of all was: How well the beautiful bride accepted the Hazard."

CDV photo of a wedding in the 1860s

Jennie Howell Hazard (1840-1891)

 from Nancy T. Hayden's book

The Complete Guide to Village Life in America

Bride and attendants from Southworth & Hawes in Boston, 1851

The Checkerboard Filler

Inspiration for the filler strips: A sprightly nine-block sampler sold at Cowan's Auctions several years ago. The center block is dated 1862.

And this flag quilt made during the War now in the collection

of the Belfast Historical Society, Maine.

This set finishes to 42" x 54"

Checkerboard Filler of 3" finished squares

Cut 3-1/2" squares in darks and lights. I count 39 squares--- 19 light, 20 dark or vice versa.

(But then I am not good at counting---get distracted.)

Filler for the top center area:

You'll need a strip of 3 for left of the word. Along the top a strip of four to fill out the 15”.

Might need another square or two. Depends on how long your "Liberty" strip is.

 Block 12 will go under the word.

Filler for the bottom right side:

Make two strips of 5:

one single and one double.

One set of three and a double set of four.

Filler for the bottom left side:

One set of three and another double set of four.

Also a plain strip cut 3-1/2" x  12-1/2" that goes below the flag on the left.

William Pope Anderson and bride,

CDV from a Cowan's auction.

Weddings are always a romantic notion, but Jennie's marriage to John Hazard seems to have been unhappy. After two daughters, she was back in Canandaigua for the 1880 census, living with her parents where she died in 1891. John Hazard and her daughters resided in Buffalo.

A Checkerboard Border

You could keep making checkerboards for a border.

With a checkerboard border finishing to 6" wide, 54" x 66”

Cut 136 squares in all. (68 light/68 dark)

.

Above a digital sketch that gives you the idea. Measurements for the all the blocks are divisible by three so 3” finished squares will work.

For the side borders: Make strips 2 squares wide by 18 squares long (finishing to 6” x 54”).

Cut 72 squares 3-1/2”.

For the top and bottom borders: Make strips 2 squares wide by 16 squares long (finishing to 6” x 54”)

Cut 64 squares 3-1/2”.

Soldier's Memorial Quilt from Farina, Illinois

The owner of this quilt posted a photo on Instagram with the caption that it was made to record the Civil War veterans in Farina, Illinois. In QuiltStories she said her great-great grandfather's family block is second from the left on the bottom. His name was George C. Wells.

"With all the blocks in the quilt, how [was] our family lucky enough to keep it?"

1911 postcard picture

Women members of the W.R.C. the

Women's Relief Corps often made quilts to raise funds.

These quilts from about 1880-1930 were often raffled or auctioned off to raise money for Veterans' causes so it may be that the Wells family bought it or had a winning ticket.

A 1910 veteran's reunion

Another option is that it was given to George Wells because he held an office in the local post of the G.A.R., the veteran's organization.

Wells was the SVC of the Lucien Greathouse Post of the GAR---the Senior Vice Commander. 

George Clark Wells (1844-1918) of Hopkinton, Rhode Island, served with Company A in the 7th Rhode Island Volunteer Infantry and was shot in the hip in the battle of Fredericksburg in 1862.  He was discharged a few weeks later with a debilitating wound that, according to his obituary, caused suffering the remainder of his life.

After the War he went west to Farina, Illinois in Fayette County where he farmed, taught school and was a deacon in the Baptist Church. 

Emma L. Brown (1843-1909) from Royalton, New York came west after marrying him in 1868. Both are buried in Farina.  

I'd hoped to find some records of their activities in fundraising events giving us more clues to the quilt's origins but nothing turned up. I'd guess both were active in Union veterans' organizations.

George lived until the end of World War I and the emphasis on crosses (white crosses on red) in the quilt make me wonder if it was not made during that war when the Red Cross was an important image.

The pattern was popular in several variations. This one from

BlockBase is #2813a, Washington Sidewalk

published towards the end of the 19th century.

Freeport, Illinois dressed up for a GAR reunion in 1910.

See the post on Quilt Stories here:

https://www.instagram.com/p/BYFHCncAaD9/?hl=en&taken-by=quiltstories

Civil War Sampler on Instagram

Civilwarquiltsampler is an Instagram tag. Someone has

been working on a Civil War Sampler from my book.

Love his/her fabric choices.

Instagram is easier to lurk on than to post on.

I get tired of texting the captions on my phone so have just

about given up on posting pictures there.

But it's always fun to look.

Check out
Civil War Quilt Sampler on Instagram
https://www.instagram.com/civilwarquiltsampler/?hl=en

And speaking of changes in technology---you can still buy the book as a book.
http://www.ctpub.com/barbara-brackmans-civil-war-sampler/

Edward Burges Marches Off to Fight the Yankees

Women on the piazza, the side porch of a Charleston house,

watching Confederate troops camped on the Battery overlooking the harbor,

Harper's Weekly, May, 1861

"We have Dress parades every afternoon. 

Quite a number of ladies come to witness them when the weather suits."

Edward Burges enlisted in a Charleston, South Carolina unit in 1861. His diary noted the day the 4th Brigades of the South Carolina Militia marched out to battle a threatening ship in the Charleston harbor.

Monday, November 11 [1861] 

"Regiment was out drilling and I was quietly greasing my boots, we received orders to start off immediately. I swallowed some food in a hurry, got all my ammunition about my person, on repairing to Regimental ground I met mother and sister, gave them some few things to take care of and we marched off not knowing where to.

Windows on Spring Street

"Our road was lined with ladies waving handkerchiefs and one in Spring St at a window held up her baby and called out 'No Yankee prisoners.' "

The women waving must have hoped to disguise their anxieties under such brashness.  Thirty-year-old Samuel Edward Burges was the only surviving son of Margaret Seyle Burges (1804-1877) and his sister Anna her only surviving daughter. They were lucky that day. The report of a Union ship in the harbor was a false alarm. The Burges were quite fortunate in that Edward survived the War. He lived into the 20th century, dying at 76.

On that November day Edward handed some keepsakes to his mother and she may have given him a few tokens or necessities but we are lucky she kept her best quilts at home. 

Members of this Tennessee company were

instructed to bring their own bedding:

"A blanket or bed-quilt."

Margaret Seyle Burges (1804-1877) left at least two spectacular quilts that survived the Civil War. They were passed on in Edward's family until just a few years ago, when descendants gave them to the Charleston Museum. 

Chintz Applique Quilt (detail) by 

Margaret Eliza Darley Seyle Burges (1804-1877),

Date-inscribed 1833. Charleston, South Carolina. 

Collection of the Charleston Museum (#2010.37)

See the whole quilt here:

http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:89294

1833 was the year between Edward's and Anna's births. The panel quilt below was probably made in the 1830s also. Margaret gave birth to five more children between 1836 and 1843 but none lived beyond their 18th year. 

Detail of a cut-out-chintz medallion with

the popular fruit basket panel in the center.

Charleston Museum # 2010.036

http://lcdl.library.cofc.edu/lcdl/catalog/lcdl:89295

Ruins on the Battery.

Photo by George F. Barnard, 1865.

This is the same street as in the illustration at the top of the page,

viewed from the other end of the block and the War.

Obviously these quilts were well cared for despite the destruction in Charleston. Photographer
George F. Barnard documented the ruins of Charleston at the end of the War.

The Pinckney house by George F. Barnard

I haven't been able to find anything about how Margaret and Anna spent those five miserable years.

Another of Barnard's Civil War photos,

"Refugees Leaving the Old Homestead" shows two

women and two children with furniture and textiles tied to a wagon

in 1862.

The quilts indicate the Burgeses were well-to-do before the War. Husband James S. Burges, who'd died in 1850, had been a successful printer. Edward himself worked for the Charleston Mercury newspaper before the war, traveling through the country around Charleston collecting subscriptions and reporting on local news such as tornadoes and trials. He obviously had not inherited enough property or money to live on, although he owned a farm in Cheraw.

Margaret is buried in Charleston with her two-year old daughter

 Henrietta Jessie who died in 1845 and an infant son.

The top lines read:

"Margaret Eliza D

Relict of

James S. Burges Senr"

(Relict means widow)

The Burges family is buried in the yard

of St. John's Lutheran Church, which

like Margaret survived the war. She died in 1877.

St. John's at the end of the war, the tower on the left.

Photo by Barnard.

Read Samuel Edward Burges's diary in two parts:
"The Diary of Samuel Edward Burges, 1860-1862." Samuel Edward Burges and Thomas W. Chadwick, The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 2 (Apr., 1947), pp. 63-75.

"The Diary of Samuel Edward Burges, 1860-1862 (Continued)." Samuel Edward Burges and Thomas W. Chadwick, The South Carolina Historical and Genealogical Magazine. Vol. 48, No. 3 (Jul., 1947), pp. 141-163.

More From Japan (and New Hampshire)

I showed Tonko's work last week.
https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2017/08/yankee-diary-in-japan.html

Her Japanese quilt friend Jun wrote in a comment:

"She treats inches as centimeters to make blocks. For example, she makes 5 inch block as 5cm block. Which means she makes a 5 inch block less than 2 inches.
and she is sewing all by hand. I did some of your past projects with her, I am always amazed by her work."

In putting all this cross-cultural quilting together I see her friend does a blog as Bear Necessities and uses the names Daisyusanh and usnhjun. And on her instagram page "Jun living in New Hampshire."
https://www.instagram.com/daisyusanh/?hl=en

I've been keeping track of Jun's Yankee Diary blocks too through her Instagram posts. Love her fabric choices and her photo set-ups.

I rather randomly clicked on links on Bear Necessities and found some interesting pictures.

Jun has been making my BOM's for years. I am so pleased

And then there are some other intriguing series patterns....