Ladies' Aid Sampler #9: Hearts & Darts & The Alerts

 

Hearts & Darts by Becky Brown

Block #9 in the Ladies' Aid Sampler is Hearts & Darts to recall the Ladies' Alert Clubs, a neglected chapter of Civil War women's work.

A "Daughter of the Regiment"

Union women's organized Civil War work was centered on the Sanitary Commission and to a lesser extent the Christian Commission, primarily concerned with gathering, making and buying supplies for hospitals and soldiers.

Alert Clubs were offshoots of Ladies' Aid Societies and the local Sanitary Commission groups, perhaps inspired by the young women of Norfolk, Ohio who formed the first Alert Club, dedicated to raising money. 

New York City's Women's Central noticed their success and suggested other communities form Alert Clubs. The model seems to have really been a kind of patriotic shakedown by the town's pretty girls. People (most likely men) subscribed, promising say 20 cents a month, and collectors came by on a regular basis to pick up the dimes. Note picture of demure collector "Alert" below.

From a post war history The Tribute Book...

They might make slippers and quilts...

Hearts & Darts by Becky Brown

Denniele Bohannon

Hearts & Darts by Robyn Revelle Gragg

The money, of course, was all for the cause, spent on supplies for soldiers

and good works like paying off the mortgage of a soldier's widow as

the women of Norwalk did.

The Alert Club in Silver Creek, New York, on Lake Erie's shore sent $5 in February, 1864.

Silver Creek, fifty years later

Hearts & Darts by Barbara Schaffer

Hearts & Darts, thus, is an excellent block to recall the female "collectors" of the Alert Clubs.

The Block

Massachusetts project & the Quilt Index

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=40-38-11

Hearts and Darts is one name for a popular pattern also called

Double Hearts as in this one found in a Massachusetts trunk.

Detail of the birds

But it seems New Yorkers were exceptionally fond of the design.

Blocks in a New York album 

The patterns were cut from folded paper, snowflake style,

and there are many variations.

William H. Thompson, Brooklyn 1866

Fat hearts

Dated 1863, Bedford, New York

Skinner Auction

Or Skinny

Hearts & Darts by Barbara Brackman

Ours fills up the empty space in the corners with the 

same hearts cut for the set.

Blocks in a Blauvelt family album from New York

If you'd like to know more about the Alert Clubs you can read the 1864 minutes of the Norwalk Club in the Firelands Pioneer, beginning on page 1734. They made a few quilts.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/The_Firelands_Pioneer/pqI-AAAAYAAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=firelands+pioneer+alert+club&pg=PA1763&printsec=frontcover