Saturday, May 14, 2022
Another Quilt Stolen & Rescued
Wednesday, May 11, 2022
American Stars #5: The Allstons: Mariner's Compass
"Many of my people has left me & gone over to the Enemy, for they think we have no army coming in & have been Deceived, as we hear nothing from you in a great while...." Francis Marion to his commander.
During the short encounter Marion lost his nephew and the battle to the British.
After the war William built Clifton Plantation and became so rich he was known as King Billy. President George Washington visited Clifton in 1791, impressed by the estate:
"Large, new and elegantly furnished. It stands on a sand hill, high for this country, with his rice fields below, the contrast of which with the lands bank of it, and the sand and piney barrens through which we passed, is scarcely to be believed."
The Alstons' position as wealthy planters and descendants of Colonial governors meant access to political power with two South Carolina state governors named Alston. King Billy's son Joseph Alston (1779−1816) served for two years during the War of 1812. He'd attended the Southern aristocracy's choice Northern school, the College of New Jersey in Princeton, where he met Theodosia Burr, daughter of the era's unsuccessful candidate for President. They married in 1801 just before Aaron Burr became Vice-President under victor Thomas Jefferson.
The young couple's honeymoon included a trip to the inauguration in Washington, the first in the new city. Theodosia, whose mother had died when she was a child, was close to her father.
She missed Burr in South Carolina where the climate and probably the culture held little appeal for her. Her one joy was son Aaron Burr Alston.
"Mrs. Alston is fully bent on going. You must not be surprised to see her very low, feeble, and emaciated. Her complaint is an almost incessant nervous fever." Timothy Green to Aaron Burr
After the Civil War the widowed Elizabeth managed an unprofitable rice plantation. To pay taxes, mortgages and living expenses she began writing weekly articles under the name Patience Pennington for the New York Sun describing her place and the life of the people who worked there in the early 20th century. The pieces were gathered in a popular book A Woman Rice Planter that solved her financial problems.
"Like her first book, Chronicles of Chicora Wood depicts an aristocratic view; the book gives the impression that white southerners heroically endured traumatic social changes and, incorrectly, assumes that slaves enjoyed their servitude."
Saturday, May 7, 2022
Amelia Hightower Calhoun's Civil War
The museum caption indicates it was made between 1830 and 1850. The donor, a descendant of Amelia's sister Elizabeth Leggett Hightower White (1816-1886), gave the name as Double Chain.
James was considered a moderate and a Unionist in a Secession-determined city. But once the war began and the ranks of Democrats thinned to join the Confederate army James won enough mayoral votes to be elected to 4 one-year terms from 1862 through 1866.
From the caption: "This quilt was given by the maker, Amelia Hightower Holt Calhoun, to her sister, Elizabeth Leggett Hightower White (1816-1886). Elizabeth gave the quilt to her grandson, John White Gardner (1857-1936) and he to his daughter, Mildred Gardner Kelley (b.1892). Mildred gave the quilt to her sister, Priscilla Neal Gardner Hamrick (d.1962), who was the grandmother of the donor."If Amelia made this quilt she would have done so between 1840 and the late 1880s. The family tale: She gave it to her sister Elizabeth Leggett Hightower (1816-1886) who died a few years before Amelia. Elizabeth married twice. Her first husband was John Martin White (1806-1850); the second Allen Gates Fambro (1800-1880). Elizabeth had children with both husbands. The quilt went to John White Gardner (1857-1936), son of her eldest daughter Mary Antoinette White Gardner (1835-1912). John White Gardner went west and presumably so did the quilt. Next in line was his daughter, Mildred Gardner Kelley (1892-1976), born in Texas, died in Missouri.