Wednesday, October 16, 2024

Cornelia Grinnell Willis's Civil War

 

Cornelia Grinnell Willis (1825-1904)
Massachusetts's New Bedford Whaling Museum has this poor 
photo of New Bedford-born Cornelia Willis in her old age, 
which I have tried to clear up a bit. 
Is that a quilt in her lap?

When Civil War commenced in 1861 Cornelia Willis had been married to successful newspaper publisher Nathaniel Parker Willis for about 14 years.

Nathaniel Parker Willis (1807-1867)
Willis was known as quite a dandy. He was famous at the time 
as a poet but his real success was in publishing newspapers, particularly The Home Journal, predecessor to Town & Country.

Cornelia was Willis's second wife marrying him when she was about 22. She met him in Washington where she lived with her adoptive parents U.S. Representative Joseph Grinnell (her father's brother) and Sarah Russell Grinnell (her mother's sister.) A complicated family here of double aunts and double uncles....

Cornelia became stepmother to Nathaniel's four-year-old daughter Imogen, whose mother Mary Stace Willis had died in childbirth along with her second baby, much to the sorrow of the families and Imogen's nursemaid, Harriet Jacobs.

By 1861 Cornelia had four living children of her own. Her last child was a daughter born in the fall of 1860 who died at birth. They were living in Cornwall, New York, 40 miles up the Hudson from New York City in a 14-room house they built called Idlewild.

Idlewild designed by Calvert Vaux still stands.

The Grinnells and the Willises were successful, brilliant and contentious. Nathaniel, considered the highest paid newspaper editor and writer of his time, was brother to Sarah Willis Parton, who published as Fanny Fern, lauded as the highest paid female journalist at the same time. Nathaniel refused to print Sarah's articles. Sarah published a novel Ruth Hall in which she ridiculed a man much like Nathaniel. By the time of the war brother and sister were not speaking to each other.

Is this Uncle Sam roasting Presidential candidate James Buchanan,
doughface Northerner with Southern sympathies?

Nathaniel had a reputation as a "doughface," a northerner who defended slavery. His newspaper was praised by Jefferson Davis as one of "the only Northern papers that the South can securely trust." Lydia Maria Child noted that even after war began his newspaper was not violently pro-slavery but subtly and systematically so.

Cornelia, on the other hand, was from a Quaker family with several members outspoken in support of abolition. How she and her husband handled those differences of opinion is up in the air. There were other conflicts including a public adultery trial by actor Edwin Forrest who accused Nathaniel of seducing his wife and attacked him with a whip.

The whipped seducer. Public ridicule.

As the war began the Willises were employing the nursemaid who'd cared for Imogen when she was young. Harriet Jacobs was an African-American woman, an escaped slave from North Carolina. Cornelia rehired her after the birth of her second child. 


Hattie Jacobs spent her evenings after the Willis children were abed writing her autobiography, a hard-to-believe tale of hiding in an attic for several years before she found her way to New York. She published it with Lydia Maria Child's editorial assistance just before the war under the pseudonym Linda Brent. 


Cornelia knew quite a bit of Harriet's story. After the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act gave slaveholders legal rights to reclaim escapees Harriet worried about being kidnapped. Cornelia sent Harriet and her own youngest child to her family home in New Bedford when they thought she needed to hide. 

When Harriet read that one of that family was in New York she told Cornelia, who suggested she use some of her fortune to purchase Harriet. Harriet refused to be considered a piece of merchandise, but Cornelia went ahead, raising funds from friends to pay the Norcom family $300 (over $9,000 today.)

Louisa Jacobs (1833-1927)

When war began Harriet moved to Alexandria, Virginia where she and daughter Louisa maintained a  school for freed people. Nathaniel Willis also went to Washington reporting on the war for The Home Journal, which had been neutral on the slavery issue before the war. The paper now took the Union side, losing its Southern readers and many Northerners too. Willis's 1890 biographer Henry A. Beers explained his conflict:
"He was, of course, a Union man. But he retained a secret sympathy with the South, and a liking for 'those chivalrous, polysyllabic Southerners, incapable of a short word or a mean action,' whom he had known at Saratoga years before.... the [newspaper's readers],  a large proportion of whose subscribers were in the South, had fallen off seriously."

Cornelia remained at Idlewild when war began with her children but income was tight and she rented out her mansion, returning to live with her father at New Bedford. In 1863 she reclaimed the house, turning it into a girls' school. By then Nathaniel lived in New York, refusing to visit his family and home in reduced circumstances. His health was failing (suffering from seizures among other crises.) He died on his 61st birthday in 1867 at Idlewild. 

1863
We can see Cornelia's fortunes through ads in the New York papers

1867
She leased the school.

She offered the house for sale.

The Willis women and children remained quite close to Harriet and her daughter Louisa, who was in boarding school before the Civil War. Tracing their histories one can see lives intertwined throughout the 19th century and into the 20th.

Imogen Willis Eddy (1842-1904) at Harvard
"We do all the computing connected with the meridian circle, our special work being to locate the position of certain stars…Harvard is the only college that employs women as mathematical computers." Imogen.
The Willises often provided financial gifts; the Jacobses provided homes as when Imogen lived in Cambridge, Massachusetts working at Harvard College Observatory. Imogen boarded at Harriet & Louisa's boarding house.

The house on Auburn still stands. Imogen was just one
of many brilliant Willises. The youngest boy Bailey Willis
became an eminent geologist. 

Washington Times

Cornelia had lived at his home in Washington for 8 years before her death in 1904.

Wednesday, October 9, 2024

Washington Whirlwind #10: President's Block

 

Washington Whirlwind #10: President's Block by Elsie Ridgley

We know all too well that the Lincoln family was heading for more tragedy soon after the Union victory. Five days after Robert E. Lee surrendered the Confederate Army in April, 1865, Southern zealot John Wilkes Booth shot Abraham Lincoln in the head while Mary sat beside her husband.

Her long-expressed refrain that no one suffered more than she was just a prelude to the disaster that would have traumatized anybody. Her dying husband was moved to a boarding house bedroom across the street from the theater where he was shot. The Petersen House at 516 East 10th Street became the site of an overnight death watch.

The Petersen House was a museum in 1925
as it is today, part of the Ford's Theater National Historic Site.

Imaginary deathbed scene with Cabinet members in attendance
The spool bed and striped wallpaper were accurate.

Washington's prominent preachers came to console family, friends and colleagues; Washington's most respected physicians to administer to the unconscious President.

Dr. Charles Sabin Taft (1835-1900)

Among the doctors was an army surgeon in the audience at Ford's Theater that night, Julia, Bud & Holly Taft's older half-brother. Charles was lifted into the Presidential box where he quickly realized
the situation was hopeless. His father recorded in his journal: "When Chas reached the Box the President was lying upon the floor. Water and stimulants were used immediately but without avail in attempts to revive him."

 President's Block by Elsie Ridgley
 
The 30-year-old doctor was among those who carried Lincoln to the house across the street and stayed with him until he died in the early morning. Sister Julia Taft remembered that her older brother associated that terrible night with the lilacs blooming in Washington and as long as he lived "the scent of lilacs would turn him sick and faint."


Petersen's small back bedroom expanded to accommodate 20 onlookers in this Leslie's Illustrated representation. Despite his actual absence from the scene, Tad is pictured near the foot of the bed, Mary sobbing in the background. Charles Taft's father Horatio Taft recalled that Mary rejected the idea of calling in her youngest son. "Do not send for him, his violent grief would disturb the House." Tad remained at the White House.

 President's Block by Becky Brown

 Secretary of the Navy Gideon Welles & Mary Jane Hale Welles

Mary Jane was born the same year as Mary Todd Lincoln and gave birth to 9 children. Six of her young children died before the Civil War. She was Mary Lincoln's friend and often offered consolation for the Lincoln's losses, but the First Lady would not be consoled. Mary Jane may have waited with Mary at the Petersen House.

Gideon Welles, recognizable with his white beard (in the right side in the drawing above) wrote in his diary:
 "The giant sufferer lay extended diagonally across the bed, which was not long enough for him. He had been stripped of his clothes. His large arms, which were occasionally exposed, were of a size which one would scarce have expected from his spare appearance. His slow, full respiration lifted the clothes with each breath that he took. His features were calm and striking. I had never seen them appear to better advantage than for the first hour, perhaps, that I was there."


 President's Block by Jeanne Arnieri
 
Photographers Julius Uhlke and his brother Henry boarded at Petersen's.
After a night supplying hot water to the doctors Julius recorded the room
 where Lincoln had died. The bed is now in the Chicago Historical Society.

The woven coverlet was often pictured with some artistic license.

Horatio Taft wrote that Mrs. Lincoln occupied a separate room at Petersen's "with some of her friends ... She went in frequently to see the President with Doct Gurley (The family Pastor)....She was not in the room when he died. Robert Lincoln was there ... Upon one occasion when Mrs L went in and saw her husband she fainted and was carried out insensible. It was thought best for her not to be there when he died."

Diarist Benjamin Brown French (1800-1872)

Benjamin French, who'd been planning victory celebrations for the Capitol city, joined the vigil at Petersen's extending his hand to Mary Lincoln who "wrung it in an agony of grief." As Director of Public Buildings he then began preparing another funeral and national mourning.

Washington, April 19th, 1865

A Mourning Cockade


Funeral preparations included clipping locks of hair,
this one for Mary McCormick Cameron, a senator's wife.

The Block

President's Block: the name from the Chicago Tribune's
Nancy Cabot quilt column in the 1930s.



Jeanne's top with 11 & 12 missing.
Two more patterns to go.



Wednesday, October 2, 2024

Links for Kentucky Classic

Kentucky Classic as a 9-block quilt, Blocks 1-7 by Elsie Ridgley

Our Block of the Month in applique for Civil War Quilts in 2024 is Kentucky Classic based on
a group of mid-19th century designs by women in Garrard County.

Kentucky Quilt Project
Medallion format Kentucky Classic
by Amanda Estill Moran, Garrard County

Click here to see the introduction:

Stitchers are doing it both as a medallion based on the originals and a block-by-block of 9 designs---a less formidable project. Here are links to blocks we've posted already.

Block #1, Kentucky Reel by Rondi
Block #2 Kentucky Wildflower by Elsie Ridgley


Block #3 Kentucky Carnation by Becky Collis

Block #3, Golden Rod by Rondi

Block #5, Rose Tree by Becky Collis

Block #6, Kentucky Paw-paw by Elsie Ridgley
Mistitled #8 at the post headline.

Block # 7, Wild Persimmon by Elsie Ridgley


Wednesday, September 25, 2024

Kentucky Classic #7: Wild Persimmon for Lucy Kemper West

 



Kentucky Classic #7, Wild Persimmon by Elsie Ridgley

Some design elements in these Kentucky Classic quilts are quite common, for example the roses with 8 lobes and the buds or fruit we are calling a Kentucky Paw-paw (see last month's block)...


Rose                    Fruit


Others like the Goldenrod (Block #4) seem unusual enough to offer a good clue to a Garrard County quilt.
A second distinctive regional element is this fruit full of dots.

Barb Eikmeier Collection
Found in Missouri

Zerelda Emmaline McClary Oliver (b ca. 1822)
Garrard County, Kentucky
Also seen in Missouri

McCain Whig Rose

This month's pattern's inspiration is Lucy Kemper West's quilt 
in the DAR Museum, full of dots and fruit. 
Last month we discussed Lucy's niece Louisa West Jackman, 
a fellow Garrard County resident.

Lucy's husband Lysander West and Louisa's father Henry were brothers. 


Lucy Kemper was born in 1792 and died a few days after her 84th birthday in 1876. She was a generation older than some of the other quiltmakers discussed here, marrying Lysander West in 1812 and giving birth to 7 children before 1826. Husband Lysander died in 1840. 



Eldest son Lysander II joined many other Kentuckians in moving to Missouri before the Civil War settling in Cass County in the western part of the state near Kansas City. Others of her children and siblings also seemed to have lived and died in Missouri.




The quilt in the DAR Museum is said to have won a prize at the Missouri State Fair in 1926 although fair records do not mention any familiar names.

1926 State Fair, Sedalia

Perhaps Lysander brought the quilt to Missouri and his descendants entered it in the "Old Quilt" category. I wonder if it wasn't made by Lysander's wife Ruth Smith Logan West (1830-1924,) another Kentucky-born woman of the generation to have been making such fancy quilts in the 1850s.

The Block
Wild Persimmon

We could see the fruit that is so typical of these Garrard County quilts as a pineapple, except pineapples don't really have dots or grow in Kentucky. How about a native Kentucky persimmon full of seeds?

Wild Persimmons



Side-by-side set of 14"/15" blocks


Elsie Ridgley's blocks 1-7 with border. Two more to go.

The fruit full of seeds is the last pattern included in Becky Brown's Medallion Kentucky Classic.

Becky's finished top. She certainly added a bit to the basic pattern.
Spectacular!




The fruit goes over the corner seams. I'd guess if you enlarge the pattern 180% you will have the fruit and leaves.
A few relevant links:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/37403676/lucy-west

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2012/02/garrard-county-kentucky.html

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2023/05/kentucky-river-rose-pattern.html

https://quiltindex.org/view/?type=fullrec&kid=16-12-146

 

Denver Art Museum
Here's a modified medallion format with a looser arrangement.
Know nothing about it but it looks Kentucky classic to me.


The applique on that one seems to have been done with a herringbone stitch.




Amanda Moran's center image is not square. The fruit appliques do not rotate around the center either but are flipped.