Washington Whirlwind #11 Road To the White House (& Away)

                                                        

Washington Whirlwind #11

Road To the White House (& Away) by Jeanne Arnieri

Roads go two ways. This month's block remembers the painful road away from the White House that Mary Todd Lincoln and her sons took after Lincoln's assassination. They were required to vacate the family quarters for new President Andrew Johnson, wife Eliza, their grown daughters and children.

Sister Elizabeth Todd Edwards and friend Elizabeth Keckly tried to help the ex-First Lady with her plans and packing but getting Mary Lincoln to focus on a future without her husband was difficult. 

The nation mourned

Almost six weeks passed before the Johnsons could move into the Executive Mansion. The Lincolns left for Chicago on the train with "scarcely a friend to tell her good-by," recalled Elizabeth Keckly when she dictated her memoir. She accompanied Mrs. Lincoln as she "passed down the public stairway, entered her carriage, and quietly drove to the depot where we took the cars. The silence was almost painful."

Brady Studios, 1863

Mary Lincoln's eccentricities---her self-absorption, post-traumatic stress syndrome and tendencies to hoard--- interfered with the orderly transition. Objects with links to her husband were given away because of painful associations; lack of supervision enabled souvenir seekers to strip the White House and her inability to choose wisely caused arguments with eldest son Robert, which Elizabeth Keckly remembered.

Robert "tried without avail to influence his mother to set fire to her vast stores of old goods. ‘What are you going to do with that old dress, mother?' he would ask. ‘Never mind, Robert, I will find use for it. You do not understand this business.’

Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926)

Robert, the only son who survived her, was often at odds with Mary,

rarely placating her or tolerating her tantrums as his father had done.

Elizabeth remembered his rather harsh advice about White House souvenirs:

"I wish to heaven the car would take fire in which you place these boxes for transportation to Chicago, and burn all of your old plunder up;’ and then, with an impatient gesture, he would turn on his heel and leave the room."

Road To the White House

Elsie's purple version

The boxes were full of her "dresses" at a time when the word could mean the yardage as well as the finished garment, fabric Mary would never wear again in her conspicuous mourning but fabric she transported many yards from home to home for the rest of her life. 

Typical railroad train, "the cars" of the time, this one the Lincoln

funeral train that took his remains and son Willie's back to Springfield,

 Illinois to inter him in early May. Mary did not travel to the interment but Robert did.

Lake Michigan, the Chicago River and the city before the 1871 Fire

Mary and Tad began housekeeping in Chicago where Robert was settling into a life as independent of his mother as he could create.

Road To the White House by Denniele Bohannon

Diarist Benjamin Brown French who had worked closely with her for four years wrote on May 24th, 1865:

“Mary Lincoln left the city …I went up and bade her good-by, and felt really very sad, although she has given me a world of trouble. I think the sudden and awful death of the President somewhat unhinged her mind, for at times she has exhibited all the symptoms of madness…it is well for the nation that she is not longer in the White House.”

After years of being rather circumspect about the First Lady he wrote: “It is is not proper that I should write down, even here, all I know! May God have her in his keeping, and make her a better woman." He continued to act as the official introducing the Johnson Presidential women at public events.

"Oh how different it is to the introductions to Mrs. Lincoln! She sought to put on the airs of an Empress – these ladies are plain, ladylike, republican ladies, their dresses rich but modest and unassuming.”

Tennessee State Museum Collection

Andrew & Eliza Johnson with daughters Martha & Mary in 1843

The Block

Road To the White House by Elsie Ridgley

Farm Journal called this orderly string quilt variation 

Road to the White House (BlockBase 1693)

The Broken Sugar Bowl could refer to all the White House

china pilfered by the public in the weeks after Lincoln's death.

 

Becky Brown says:

Elsie's making two versions

Jeanne's sampler of 12 blocks.

One more to go---December 11th.

Ellen Carver Mobley's Civil War

Name quilt in the collection of Maryland's

Washington County Historical Society attributed to 

Ellen Carver Mobley (1827-1899)

Abigail Koontz of the Washington County Historical Society tells us that Ellen's quilt has 36 blocks with names and dates from 1845 to the 1880s. She speculates that Ellen made all the blocks, collected signatures and assembled the quilt later in the century.

Overall view (photo manipulated)

This seems likely as the pattern (similar to BlockBase+ #2442)

required some piecing skills and the blocks all look to be by the

same hand.

When the Civil War began and Ellen was collecting names she was in her mid-30s. She'd been married since she was 16, and a mother 11 months later to a family of boys that eventually totaled ten, two of whom died as an children.

The 1860 census taken almost a year before war officially began shows Ellen and her family living in the county jail in Hagerstown. Husband Edward was the Sheriff (also a tailor) and the family of 7 surviving boys from Edward down to baby Lewis lived in the same building as two prisoners incarcerated for "Assault," Henry Hoffman a Turnkey and servant Elizabeth Allenchen (?)

It's not as bad as it sounds. It's more like the jail was in their house,

a stone building the county built in 1858.

Edward Mayberry Mobley recruited neighbors for a Union Infantry company (Co. A, 7th Maryland Infantry.) Ellen raised their seven surviving boys, perhaps with the help of her parents and brothers and sisters.  Eldest son Edward Carver Mobley (1844-1924) served under his father throughout the war.

Col. Edward Mayberry Mobley (1825-1906)

Ellen's husband had suffered a neck wound but recovered. By June 1865, both had returned home.

Ellen gave birth to one more son in July, 1866.

The elder Edward had been a carpenter/cabinet maker before the war, specializing when they first married in furniture and later in carriage building. Ellen's husband spent his post-war years active in politics and local government, particularly active in the fire department and the veteran's organization, the GAR. The Mobleys were the middle-class mechanics, clerks and retailers of late-19th-century Hagerstown life.

Ellen died at the age of 72 in this brick house at 525 North Locust Street, survived by 8 of her sons. Son Lewis inherited the house. Her quilt descended in son Harry's family, who wound up in Mississippi. Ellen's great-grandchildren donated the quilt to the historical society in 1980.

Ten years ago Heritage Auctions offered a collection of Edward's Civil War possessions, including a photograph album.

Ellen & Edward II?

Local historian Justin Mayhue has written a book on Colonel Edward M. Mobley, 7th Maryland Infantry.

https://www.facebook.com/profile/100063650289742/ 
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/49437131/ellen_cecelia_mobley