Confederados #8: Album for Henry Watkins Allen

 

Confederados #8: Album Recalling Henry Watkins Allen

by Denniele Bohannon

Henry Watkins Allen (1820-1866)

Among the estimated 10,000 Confederate refugees in Mexico was Henry Watkins Allen, Governor of Confederate Louisiana in the last years of the war. Born in Virginia, he grew up in Lexington, Missouri where he may have met some of the other exiles discussed in this series. When the Civil War began he was a widower living in Louisiana, running a sugar plantation. 

People used to think nothing of cutting up historically valuable

textiles as personal souvenirs. A Connecticut Yankee

cut this star from the flag Robert E. Lee carried at

the Appomattox surrender.

After Southern surrender Allen resigned from the Governorship and headed for San Antonio, Texas and then through Eagle Pass south to Mexico City in August, 1865.

The Zócalo, Mexico City’s main square about 1865

His sympathies with Benito Juarez’s revolutionaries are evident in letters to friend Sarah Ann Dorsey of Beauvoir, Mississippi. who later quoted many in her biography Recollections of Henry Watkins Allen, Brigadier-General Confederate States Army, Ex-Governor of Louisiana.

Sarah Anne Ellis Dorsey (1829-1879)

Allen wrote of his introduction to Emperor Maximilian and Carlota and expressed his greatest fear---being imprisoned back home like Jefferson Davis (another of Sarah Dorsey’s protégés.)

Belgian Princess Marie Charlotte Amélie (1840-1927)

 known as Carlota in Mexico, was about 25 when she met Allen.

Allen without money and handicapped by leg wounds suffered at the Battle of Baton Rouge decided to support himself and his causes with an English-language newspaper The Mexican Times. Subsidized by the French, the Times claimed to be devoted to “the best interests of the Mexican Empire,” which Allen viewed as welcoming defeated Confederates.

Business street in Mexico City, mid-19th century

First published in September, 1865, Allen's newspaper promoted Mexico as an agricultural paradise with excellent climate, soil, mineral deposits and transportation to the Atlantic, the Pacific and Texas---if railroads were built. The Times invited “All those who have no employment and little means” and “those who are discontented and cannot be made satisfied with the new order of things.”

Album by Elsie Ridgley

Allen, confined to crutches, was not well. About six months after beginning the newspaper he complained of fevers, leg pain and intestinal troubles. He planned to sail to France for a surgical cure but died in Mexico City on April 22, 1866. John N. Edwards took over the Mexican Times. (See Block 12.)

The Block

 Album by Jeanne Arnieri

Vintage version of #1812 in Turkey red

 

The Ladies Art Company in their pattern catalog called this quilt block "Album" because there was a good spot for one's name in the center. A paper album is a collection gathered or bound as Sarah‘s letters from Henry Allen were.

The block has a lot of small pieces. One could fussy-cut stripes.

Read More

Sarah Ann Dorsey, Recollections of Henry Watkins Allen, Brigadier-General Confederate States Army, Ex-Governor of Louisiana.    

https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=nyp.33433082544754&seq=86

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

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