Annie Moseley's Civil War and After

 

Silk quilt sold at a Case Auction  a few years ago. Notice the blue

ribbon at the top.

FIRST PREMIUM TENN STATE FAIR

WOMAN'S DEP'T NASHVILLE 1909

Nashville Banner, September 23, 1909

"Quilt, silk patchwork---First, Mrs. Dan Lenehan, Nashville."

The first premium?

Is this the prize winner?

It didn't take long to find Annie Elizabeth Moseley Lenehan (1844-1932) in Nashville. 

Annie's buried in Decherd.

In 1909 she'd been married to Daniel E. Lenahan (1839-1917) for about 20 years. They'd recently moved to Nashville from Decherd about 80 miles southeast of Nashville. They'd married late after the death of his first wife (Annie was about 50.) Both were Franklin County natives.

Decherd in 1924

It looks like the quilt combines an embroidered aqua silk with log

cabin blocks and a gold embroidery panel that may have been repurposed 

as the center hexagon.

The reverse shows a lot of handquilting.

Annie's obituary tells us she led an interesting life.

She was a registered pharmacist. Above she is listed in 1902

in Decherd. She and Dan ran a drug store there and also kept one in

Nashville for a short time after their move late in life.

1909

And a branch in Mont Eagle, about 20 miles from Decherd.

We also learn that she became interested in medicine and pharmacy during the Civil War that began when she was about 16, living at Salem in southern Franklin County, where her father Thomas Moseley was a merchant and farmer.

The Hudnall-Simmons-Moseley House, once an elegant dwelling.

On the Franklin County Historical Society's Facebook page Joyce Shelton

tells us her great-grandparents were once slaves at this house.

https://www.facebook.com/page/115132431907277

Annie's father selling slaves in 1856

Winchester Weekly Appeal

It should be no surprise that ardent Confederates were slave holders.

During the war the Union Army under General Rosecrans occupied the area, which was strongly Confederate. 

Union troops under General Don Carlos Buell in Decherd, 1862

Harper's Weekly

As a county history tells us: "Franklin County was directly on the line of the contending armies, and consequently her citizens suffered greatly from the ravages of war." Annie must have done her nursing in the years 1862 and 1863.

After the war she taught at the Mary Sharp College, not far from home in Winchester, where Rosecrans had his headquarters in 1863.

She also owned and managed a flour mill in Decherd.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/19322663/annie-elizabeth-lenehan

Ladies' Aid Sampler #9: Hearts & Darts & The Alerts

 

Hearts & Darts by Becky Brown

Block #9 in the Ladies' Aid Sampler is Hearts & Darts to recall the Ladies' Alert Clubs, a neglected chapter of Civil War women's work.

A "Daughter of the Regiment"

Union women's organized Civil War work was centered on the Sanitary Commission and to a lesser extent the Christian Commission, primarily concerned with gathering, making and buying supplies for hospitals and soldiers.

Alert Clubs were offshoots of Ladies' Aid Societies and the local Sanitary Commission groups, perhaps inspired by the young women of Norfolk, Ohio who formed the first Alert Club, dedicated to raising money. 

New York City's Women's Central noticed their success and suggested other communities form Alert Clubs. The model seems to have really been a kind of patriotic shakedown by the town's pretty girls. People (most likely men) subscribed, promising say 20 cents a month, and collectors came by on a regular basis to pick up the dimes. Note picture of demure collector "Alert" below.

From a post war history The Tribute Book...

They might make slippers and quilts...

Hearts & Darts by Becky Brown

Denniele Bohannon

Hearts & Darts by Robyn Revelle Gragg

The money, of course, was all for the cause, spent on supplies for soldiers

and good works like paying off the mortgage of a soldier's widow as

the women of Norwalk did.

The Alert Club in Silver Creek, New York, on Lake Erie's shore sent $5 in February, 1864.

Silver Creek, fifty years later

Hearts & Darts by Barbara Schaffer

Hearts & Darts, thus, is an excellent block to recall the female "collectors" of the Alert Clubs.

The Block

Massachusetts project & the Quilt Index

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=40-38-11

Hearts and Darts is one name for a popular pattern also called

Double Hearts as in this one found in a Massachusetts trunk.

Detail of the birds

But it seems New Yorkers were exceptionally fond of the design.

Blocks in a New York album 

The patterns were cut from folded paper, snowflake style,

and there are many variations.

William H. Thompson, Brooklyn 1866

Fat hearts

Dated 1863, Bedford, New York

Skinner Auction

Or Skinny

Hearts & Darts by Barbara Brackman

Ours fills up the empty space in the corners with the 

same hearts cut for the set.

Blocks in a Blauvelt family album from New York

If you'd like to know more about the Alert Clubs you can read the 1864 minutes of the Norwalk Club in the Firelands Pioneer, beginning on page 1734. They made a few quilts.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Firelands_Pioneer/pqI-AAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=firelands+pioneer+alert+club&pg=PA1763&printsec=frontcover 

Civil War Era Needlework

 

David Thompson Antiques

Quilts were not the only needlework inspired by sectional imagery during the Civil War. Here's a reticule, a purse in Union imagery.

Godey's Lady's Book

Godey's Lady's Book

The women's magazines of the day published patterns of all kinds

A "Needle Cushion"

(like a pin cushion)

Made for Albert Vaughan, 60th New York Inf. H by Emma Fisher in 1861

This little sewing kit with an image of the Confederate flag

is supposed to have been given to Confederate John S. Mosby 

by Mary Custis Lee but as she had a severe case

 of rheumatoid arthritis we can imagine someone else

did those tiny stitches.

New York Historical Society

Another Confederate gift, a pouch for tobacco?

In the shield is inked:

"From a young lady in Lebanon, Ky"

https://blog.nyhsdev2.org/exhibit/tobacco-pouch-or-sweet-bag

Tobacco pouches were a soldier's necessity.

Leather bag with Lincoln printed on one side; Grant on the other.

https://www.aaawt.com/html/firearms/f1137.html

More needlework in these posts:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2020/06/godeys-unionist-patterns.html

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/06/patriotic-headdress.html

Union Shields from New York and Elsewhere

 

From a sampler album

Polak Collection in Amsterdam

If you are looking for more blocks for your Ladies' Aid Album

consider a Union shield from a New York sampler.

Julie Silber & Jane Lurie's inventory. 

They think New York.

Dated 1867

Many of these Union symbols are in post-war quilts.

Sampler from Brooklyn & Newark

Garth's Auction

From the New Jersey project and the Quilt Index

Martha Meeker's has seen better days but I like the way she used

the stars to link the blocks.

Online auction: "A.M.C?"

More:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2011/03/northern-lily-southern-rose-block-1.html

And a monumental example, 83" x 74", from Knoxville's Case Antiques auction.