Baltimore Belles & Rebels #7: Apollo's Lyre For Elizabeth Lindsay Lomax

 

 

Baltimore Belles & Rebels #7 Apollo's Lyre For Elizabeth Lindsay Lomax by Becky Collis

Elizabeth Virginia Lindsay Lomax (1796-1867) began her Civil War in Washington City but spent time in Baltimore, a city teetering between Union and Confederate loyalties. A Virginia-born widow in her sixties, she'd married a Virginia Army officer who'd died twenty years earlier leaving her to raise their large family. In 1861 she had six grown children and a granddaughter.

 1860 Census with five daughters living at home

Published in 1943

Elizabeth's journal, published as Leaves From an Old Washington Diary, 1854-1863, reveals a rather delightful home before the war, full of pretty women in their 20s, many beaus and many boys, like J.E.B. Stuart and Fitzhugh Lee, friends of son Lindsay .

Lunsford Lindsay Lomax (1835-1913) flanked by Confederate friends Fitz Lee & JEB Stuart. Lindsay and Fitz survived the war; JEB did not.

 Once war began Elizabeth's Virginia loyalties inspired her to choose the Confederacy.  

"April 16, 1861 From Washington City: Rained all night. Reported again last evening that Virginia has seceded, but it is not believed. Events crowd so fast that I cannot relate them in my diary. 

April 18 Virginia has seceded!! Heaven help us.

April 19 Visitors all day long. Many people are leaving the city. Great excitement and unrest."

 

"April 21 This has been a frightfully exciting day. Riots here and in Baltimore, many persons shot, also a heartrending day for [son] Lindsay [who] told me that he had sent in his resignation; Colonel [James E “JEB”] Magruder has also sent in his resignation from the army and will go to Virginia tomorrow where Lindsay will join him…"

A Post-Civil War "Oath"

We see its legacy in our "Pledge of Allegiance."

Living in federal Washington Elizabeth was required to take the "oath," pledging Union loyalty. She refused. Her pension, her job as a copy clerk and carefree days were gone. She and the girls rented out the house and moved to Baltimore.

"September 12, Baltimore. I spent most of the day quilting. Occupation is absolutely necessary to keep one sane in these troubled times, but sewing materials, like everything else, have doubled in price --- due to the war." 

#7 Apollo's Lyre by Denniele Bohannon

She taught music lessons trying to keep ahead of wartime inflation. Her Baltimore diary includes several references to quiltmaking. She quilted alone for the most part (we'd guess at her frame) and described quilting rather than piecing or other patchwork.

 

Fashion Facilitated Smuggling

The Lomax daughters’ Confederate sentiments (and probably some smuggling, etc.) attracted the attention of Baltimore’s Union occupiers. Daughter Virginia Sarah Lomax (1830-1915) and two of her sisters were ordered to leave the city and warned that their return would be punished with treatment as spies. After Lincoln's murder in mid-April, 1865 Virginia ignored the order and found herself imprisoned with suspected conspirator Mary Surratt and other women in Washington's Old Capitol Prison.

Mary Surratt was hung as a co-conspirator in the plot

to kill the President and other government officials.

Indignant at Yankee attitudes after the April, 1865 assassination, Virginia Sarah Lomax published a book full of typical Confederate astonishment that the enemy was lacking in chivalry and manners and prison food was miserable.

Mother Elizabeth took her Southern sympathies home to her Virginia birthplace...

where daughters Mary Virginia and her single sisters, twins Julia and Mary Noel, ran a girls' academy in Warrenton, Virginia. 

The Block

A Lyre for a Music Teacher

 Lyre Quartet

See a post about the musical instrument & symbolism here:

https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2017/10/lyre-lyre.html 

Two pattern sheet this month.

Read More:

See posts:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2011/04/16-white-house.html

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2023/04/elizabeth-lindsay-lomaxs-civil-war.html

 Read Leaves from an old Washington diary, 1854-1863:

https://www.seekingmyroots.com/members/files/H000895.pdf

Four sisters are buried together in Warrentown.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/21226120/mary-noel-lomax

Confederados #7: Garden of Eden for the Whitakers & Norrises

 

Confederados #7 Garden of Eden

 Recalling Brazilian Confederado Isabella Norris Whitaker by Elsie Ridgley

Villa Americana, Brazil in São Paulo state

The term Confederado in Brazilian Portuguese refers to Confederate refugees who established colonies in the South American country. As the last American nation to abolish slavery Brazil attracted defeated Southerners who hoped to build a Confederate replica, growing cotton worked by enslaved people. Alabama politician William Hutchinson Norris arrived in 1866 with his family and bought acreage for cotton.

Dom Pedro (1825-1891), Brazil's monarch since he was five, was a strong supporter of the Confederacy and a benefactor to defeated Southerners who sought new homes, selling them land cheap and offering free transportation. Brazil with a government more stable than Mexico’s became a destination for a few thousand Confederados, many of who lived out their lives there and left Brazilian children and great-grandchildren.

Trading in slaves, Rio de Janeiro

"Many persons who, from long habit and fondly cherished theories, have become strongly attached to the institution of African slavery, fancy that in Brazil they will find an opportunity for the permanent use of that system of labor — Brazil and the Spanish possessions being the only two slaveholding communities remaining in the civilized world." New Orleans Daily Picayune, September, 1865

 

Casa de Norris

Mary Black and William Norris had 10 or 11 children. How many accompanied them from Alabama to Brazil to live in this house? Seven are buried in Brazil; three boys in the U.S.

1850 Census Alabama, Before the War

Isabella P. Norris was the oldest girl, in her mid-20s when they sailed for South America. She soon married another Confederado Joseph E. Whitaker, formerly of the Mississippi Infantry.

Lt. Joseph Elisha Whitaker (1836-1918) & Isabella P. Norris Whitaker (1841-1897)

Few of the transplanted Southerners actually owned slaves but William Norris made those archaic and cruel economics a point of pride. 

Brazil abolished slavery in 1888, over two decades after the U.S. Emancipation Proclamation. Most Brazilian/Confederate colonies failed. Norris’s Americana was an exception.

Twentieth-century Norris family members in Brazil

Steagall family members who married into the Norris family

The Block

Garden of Eden by Jeannie Arnieri

The Chicago Tribune’s Nancy Cabot quilt column published the pattern in the 1930s.

Nancy making up history 

1937 in the Chicago Tribune

Garden of Eden by Denniele Bohannon

Read More:

For more information about the colony of Americana, Brazil, see the Auburn University Libraries, which has a Confederados Digital Collection: 

https://content.lib.auburn.edu/digital/collection/confederado/search

Gaston, James McFadden, Hunting a home in Brazil: The agricultural resources and other characteristics of the country. Also, the manners and customs of the inhabitants (1867). 

William Clark Griggs, The Elusive Eden: Frank McMullan's Confederate Colony in Brazil, Austin: University of Texas, 1987. (The failed Iguape Colony)

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/101273703/isabella-whitaker