Baltimore Belles & Rebels #6: Pineapples & Plenty For Amelia Kayser Stein

 

Baltimore Belles & Rebels #6: Pineapples & Plenty For Amelia Kayser Stein By Becky Collis

Amelia Kayser (Keyser), called Millie, was born in Baltimore, Maryland in 1843, daughter of Betty Preiss and Moses Keyser, German immigrants. The 1850 Baltimore census shows Millie at 7 living on Pratt Street with a brother and three sisters (Betty had nine children.)  

Moses was a fairly prosperous merchant, a typical occupation for this immigrant generation of Jews and their children. His dry goods store was at 72 Hanover Street. 

Chaos began when Confederate sympathizers in Union Baltimore rebelled five days after Fort Sumter as the Union's Sixth Massachusetts Infantry marched through their city. ”Sesech” partisans threw stones and other missiles prompting Union soldiers to shoot into the crowd. The Pratt Street Riot left soldiers, mob members and bystanders dead.

17-year-old Luther Ladd from Lowell, Massachusetts was struck by a piece of iron, shot and killed, “The first victim of the war,” declared Harper’s Weekly. 

Account of the insurrection April 20, 1861 Baltimore Exchange

Eighteen-year-old Millie who witnessed the Pratt Street insurrection from her nearby home later told daughter Gertrude "stories of Baltimore and the Northern soldiers being stoned”

Millie married Daniel Stein (1832-1891) in March 1864, becoming part of the large Stein family. It may be that her sister-in-law Rosa Rosenstock Stein was step-daughter to Sarah G. Rosenstock (1835-1907) who has left us a quilt done in classic Baltimore Album style. 

Charleston Museum Donated by Mrs. Luke Vincent Rockwood Attributed to Sarah G. Rosenstock, dated 1857  https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=53-155-30

Baltimore's Jewish community developed their own style of  appliqued albums, not so much friendship quilts, but perhaps block sets bought from a seamstress or two.

The Steins tended towards argumentativeness. Daniel was irascible all his life according to his two youngest children. When the war began most Steins expressed a Baltimorean loyalty to the Confederacy but Daniel and younger brother Solomon were Union partisans. His son characterized Daniel as "Northern in sentiment, though all the rest of the family were Southern… exceedingly disputatious." 

Gertrude & Millie Stein about 1875 

Daniel and Solomon resolved family arguments by leaving Baltimore for Pittsburgh. Ten years later Daniel took the family to Europe, returning in 1880 to settle on ten acres in Oakland, California.

Amelia & Daniel with children about 1876, Gertrude (1874-1946) the youngest

Millie died at 45 of cancer in 1888 when Gertrude was 14, leaving two girls and three boys to be raised by an unstable father who became "more of a bother than he had been," according to Gertrude. He died three years after his wife. His children were not unhappy to be on their own. The Steins had plenty of everything but family harmony.

Pineapples & Plenty by Denniele Bohannon

Detail Denniele's machine applique.

The Block

Detail of Sarah Rosenstock's quilt, Charleston Museum

Two pineapple blocks in an 1847 BAQ attributed to Mary Ann Grooms in a Bonham/Skinner auction

Detail of Becky Collis's

For more on the Steins and the Rosenstocks see this post:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2023/07/amelia-kayser-steins-civil-war.html

Read more about Millie's children, the exceptional Steins:

Brenda Wineapple, Sister Brother. Gertrude and Leo Stein.

Linda Wagner-Martin, Favored Strangers: Gertrude Stein and Her Family 

Learn about the Jewish applique quilts of Baltimore in Ronda McAllen's AQSG paper:

http://selftaughtgenius.org/sites/stg/images/3506/McAllen_Ronda_Album_Quilts.pdf

Millie Stein's grave:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/127714469/amelia-stein