Amanda Estill Moran's Civil War

 

The Kentucky project recorded this applique extravaganza 

attributed to Amanda Malvine Estill Moran (1810-1888)

She lived in the Paint Lick community in Garrard County, Kentucky,

the red county below.

The photo of Paint Lick is not too clear but we can see it was

(and is) a small town.

Her grandfather was one of the area's earliest European land owners when the land was western Virginia in the late 18th century. Virginian James Estill was a Revolutionary War soldier killed in a battle with the Wyandots in 1782. James II seems to have been Amanda's father who inherited much of that land and passed it on to her. The Estills had 8,5000 Kentucky acres when Amanda was a girl.

Amanda's father built this home Castlewood about 1900

Amanda married Franklin Moran; the 1850 census found them with 4 children, the youngest Florence at 3, oldest John at 13. Slave-holder Franklin participated in an Emancipation movement in Kentucky, where he was one of 150 delegates to an 1849 antislavery convention in Frankfort, the state's capital. These Presbyterians advocated gradual emancipation of the enslaved.

When the Civil War began in spring, 1861 Amanda had already been through some difficult times.

The July, 1860 census listed her as a 50-year-old widow living with John, Robert and Florence. Husband Frank Moran had died a few months earlier, killed by a falling tree when he was cutting wood in a horrifying accident.

She'd lost an 18-year-old son Addison a few years before and her eldest John died in July, 861.

The news story mentions their enslaved men. The same census enumerated the widow's human property in the Slave Schedule, which listed no names. These people were worth over $20,000 in the list of her personal property. She had real estate worth over $34,000.

The 4 women over 15 may have assisted her in her quiltmaking projects.

In 1860 Garrard County's African-Americans made up about 35% of the population.

The state did not join the Confederacy and Garrard County tended to favor the Union in war-torn Kentucky. The county was the site of the large Union "Camp Dick Robinson," established there early in the war.

 
The only child surviving Amanda was Florence (1842-1922) who married John Wade Walker in 1872. Florence had two children who lived into the 20th century and we can assume their descendants brought the family quilt to be documented by the Kentucky project in the 1980s.

Next year our Civil War applique block of the month will be based on

Amanda's Garrard County quilt and several of its relatives.