Civil War Quilts: Ellen Carver Mobley's Civil War

Wednesday, November 6, 2024

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.