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.