Wednesday, February 12, 2025

Petticoat Press #2: Sarah's Favorite for Fanny Fern

 




2 Sarah's Favorite for Fanny Fern by Denniele Bohannon

Sarah Payson Willis Eldredge Farrington Parton (1811-1872)
Drawn from a commercial cabinet card dated 1864.

Sarah's Favorite remembers "Fanny Fern" a penname that became Sarah's favorite name. Intimates called her Fanny once she was a famous journalist. And famous journalist she was.


When in "reduced circumstances," several women took up the pen. Sarah's marital troubles and poverty mortified the Willis family who gave her little help. First widowed, then divorced after her second marriage, she determined to make a living in the newspapers.

The Willis men were journalists themselves editing periodicals about Calvinism, contemporary society and music. Her penname was so effective her brother did not know that his sister was Fanny Fern writing those popular columns for his own paper The Home Journal (a magazine of manners that evolved into Town & Country.). Once Nathaniel Willis found out he told assistant James Parton (eventually Fanny's third husband) to fire her.

James Parton (1822-1891)
Fanny's happiest marriage was to English-born James, 
editor turned well-respected biographer.

Hearing of her firing, a competitor, editor of the New York Ledger, thought so much of her writing that he offered her $100 an installment for a serialized story---the format in which novels like Dickens's and Harriett Beecher Stowe's were often introduced. Fanny who'd begun writing for 5 cents a column was now the highest paid woman journalist in the United States in the 1850s. 


Popular enough (thanks to Fanny) to post a circulation of 377,000
The New York Ledger is like Fanny quite obscure today---digitized copies not complete.

Sheet music riding on Sarah's novel Ruth Hall's popularity

Sarah's Favorite by Jeanne Arnieri

Fanny looked to her own experiences for her novels. Ruth Hall, which tells the story of her first marriage, her poverty-stricken widowhood and her success as a writer, sold more than 70,000 copies in a year after its 1854 publication. The basic premise was a cliche---woman without male help in financial straits---but the plot takes a dramatic turn. She succeeds on her own---new husband not required.

Curmudgeon Nathaniel Hawthorne was not a fan of female authors. In 1855 he wrote his editor that "America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women..." But he made an exception for Ruth Hall.
"In my last, I recollect, I bestowed some vituperation on female authors. I have since been reading 'Ruth Hall;' and I must say I enjoyed it a good deal. The woman writes as if the Devil was in her; and that is the only condition under which a woman ever writes anything worth reading."

Her novels sold well but not as well as the collected editions of her newspaper columns. Once a week the Ledger published her observations on culture, social mores and the irritating happenings she observed. Women did not write of irritation. She was unique and amusing, reminding one of the columns Calvin Trillin wrote for The Nation in the 1970s (I believe he earned the same amount that Fanny did 100 years later---low 3 figures.)

The status of women in all its complexities was her major interest handled with irony, satire and cynicism. Here is an imaginary letter from Hella seeking advice from an imaginary advice columnist.
"One bright afternoon I found myself in agreeable proximity to a young gentleman, to whom I resolved to make my wishes known; or in plain words, I asked the man if he would marry me, I wish you could have seen the look he gave me. ―Ah! Who shall paint that gaze? The largest, wildest pair of blue eyes I ever saw stared me in the face then. Poor fellow! Such a look of horror and amazement as his countenance wore, you never conceived of....I am getting old; what shall I do? "
The advice giver's reply (a bit insensitive to our ears:)
"The Editor responds: We would advise Hella to propose to a blind man this year."

This, of course, makes no sense but it is surprising and amusing---something no other female columnist at the time would attempt so successfully. 

Sarah's Favorite by Becky Brown

One of the 1864 portraits. Fanny's hair is so
completely unfashionable for the times that one could 
only guess she was inordinately proud of her curls
or making a personal stand against fashion.

Sarah's Favorite by Elsie Ridgley

Fanny continued the weekly column during the Civil War. Her first campaign was against shirkers who refused Lincoln's call to arms.
"We have no words to express our disgust...at the spectacle of a young man thus yawning away existence .... His well-knit limbs should be encased in a petticoat, and a subscription should be immediately raised to present him with a sewing-machine."
This threat to feminize and thus mortify malingerers seems inconsistent with her usual stands on equality. To quote friend Walt Whitman:
"Do I contradict myself?
Very well then I contradict myself."
The Block

Prints from my Morris Manor collection for Moda.

The block named Sarah's Favorite is from the Ladies Art Company, published decades after Fanny's death. BlockBase #2311.
Sarah's Favorite by Becky Collis

Read More:

A biography of Fanny: https://fannyfern.org/bio

Preview of Joyce Warren's biography:

Wednesday, February 5, 2025

Susan Cutter Wyman's Civil War

 

Collection of the St. Louis Art Museum
Silk star quilt attributed to Susan Cutter Wyman

Susan Frances Cutter Wyman (1789-1864)

Susan Cutter Wyman was in her 70s during the Civil War, living in Hillsboro, Illinois. The Wymans, Massachusetts natives, came west to join eldest son Edward (1815-1885) who'd moved to Hillsboro to teach at the Hillsboro Academy, which became a Lutheran school.


According to family history Susan pieced this quilt of over 3,600 patches of silk in seven months in 1860 right before the war began.



That year the census taker found her and husband Nehemiah, a retired butcher, in Hillsboro with daughter Sophia, her four children and Barbara Cothra (?) probably a live-in, teen-age servant.
With servant Barbara, daughter Sophia and possibly granddaughter Ellen to help with the housework Susan may have had a lot of free time. Susan was mother to six grown children, most of them living in St. Louis.

Susan's death notice from the St. Louis Daily Republican November 16, 1864.


Style, pattern and fabric make the date difficult to corroborate. Changes in silks, especially plain and plaid silks like those found here, are not easily put into a time line. When one compares it to other quilted bedcovers of silk satins & taffetas one finds similar style in early 19th-century Quaker quilts.

Smithsonian Institution
Quilted silk star associated with Clara Tarleton Penn (1782-1831)
of Maryland. We can guess being married to a man 
named William Penn she was a Quaker.

Detail of Susan Cutter Wyman's quilt showing feather quilting.

Susan's quilt has much in common with Quaker quilts from the first half of the 19th century. Was she a Quaker? We find little to corroborate that notion. While she seems to have dressed plainly in Quaker-style dress I was surprised to find a picture of her husband with a fancy silk top hat.

Nehemiah Wyman 1786-1869

From a genealogy book focused on the family.
Quakers do not create coats of arms to show their pedigrees.

But...

When Sukey Cutter and Nehemiah married in 1812 in Massachusetts an Intention of Marriage was published. Other religions might require a declaration of intentions but Quakers certainly did. Was Sukey a Quaker until she married Nehemiah? (One cannot marry outside the religion and remain an
official Quaker.) I am not a Quaker but I had a Quaker father-in-law for 20 years and he enjoyed telling me Quaker history.

Was this quilt one Susan made early in the century? Or perhaps a gift from a Massachusetts Quaker relative?

Her Find-a-Grave file:


Wednesday, January 29, 2025

2025's Applique Block of the Month Starts in March

 



Our 2025 Applique Block of the Month series begins here on the last Wednesday of March. Models are made----well, some models are started; some tops are DONE. Many years I base the series on a woman's diary from the Civil War era such as Mary Chesnut's, Caroline Cowles Richards's or Sarah Fowler Morgan's.


Sara Tappan Doolittle Lawrence Robinson
 (1827-1911) when she was thirty

This year's journal is by Sara T.D. Robinson (as she called herself), written in her first year in Kansas where she and her husband came from Massachusetts to fight slavery. Kansas; Its Interior and Exterior Life. A Full View of Its Settlement, Political History, Social Life, Climate, Soil, Productions, Scenery, Etc. was published in 1856.
My copy of Sara's diary had a leaf pressed inside.
Who owned it before me?

Sara T.D. Robinson lived on the crest of a rocky ridge overlooking the Kansas plains, the same geological formation that I live on. One hundred and seventy years and a few miles separate our houses on Mount Oread (once called Hog Back Ridge.)

Sara lived on the crest of the ridge overlooking the town.

We’ll spend March to December, 2025 observing how Sara saw the natural world around her as she braved Bushwhackers and primitive living conditions while enjoying the flora and fauna, particularly the native birds. 
Inspiration
Our blocks will be inspired by traditional applique and Sara's descriptions.

Here's a set for nine blocks on the square.
Nine blocks finishing to 15" = 45" sides.
Add 6" finished strip border with 4x9=36 birds finishing
to 5" (Add seams to the bird templates.)
Or place the blocks on point, add triangles...


And a 10" finished border as Becky Collis did:

With cardinals in the corners:

How much fabric?
If you are planning on one background fabric & 15" finished blocks:

Straight set & border- 2-1/2 yards

Diagonal set & border- 7 yards.

Nine appliqued blocks: birds, trees & flowers in color:
You might like to have 8 different half-yard pieces
or scraps from your bottomless stash.

Elsie Ridgley's fabrics


Denniele Bohannon's

Becky Collis's

Barbara Brackman's---pieced background

The pattern fits into a 14" square but you might want to give the birds more space & make 17" blocks.
Starts here at CivilWarQuilts on March 25th.

Here's our Facebook Group for posting your birds:
LibertysBirdsQuilt

And you can buy the pattern in my Etsy shop for $12.
Click here:

Wednesday, January 22, 2025

Rebecca Stoner Rosen's Civil War

Flying Geese Quilt attributed to Rebecca Jane Stoner Rosen (1838-1921)
79" x 94"
Quilts of Virginia

When the Civil War began 23-year-old Rebecca Rosen had been married to David Harrison Rosen for about 6 years and had two young sons, James and David L, born the month the war commenced. (Some accounts tell us there were three boys.) David I was a carpenter, contracting to build houses and barns in their neighborhood in northern Rockbridge County, Virginia.

The 1860 census shows David & Rebecca with 4-year-old James
living among her Stoner relatives.

In July, 1861 the husband she married at 17 was "fearfully wounded," in the first battle of Bull Run according to his 1929 obituary. Wounds must have healed as he re-enlisted the following year in the Fourth Virginia Infantry Regiment of the Confederate Army: Stonewall Brigade of the Liberty Hall Volunteers where he remained until the Confederate surrender.
 

Tombstones in the graveyard of the "Old  Providence A.R.P. Church" they attended tell us a little of her Civil War experiences.


When a diphtheria epidemic raged through the area sons James and David L. died within three weeks of each other.

FindaGrave
James's tombstone is hard to read. The death date 
is 1864 not 1861, when he was 8.

David died at the end of November at age 3 years, 7 months and 14 days; James on December 11th at 8 years, 8 months and 6 days as their markers lovingly count. Baby Cornelia born in 1864 survived. After the war Rebecca gave birth to three long-lived daughters, Cora (born 1869), Flora (1872) and Lola (1876.) 
.


The census also tells us that David was farming with land worth about $3,000. Three older females lived in the house. Elizabeth Stoner (1883-1886) at 66 was Rebecca's mother.


Eighty-one year-old Margaret Minnick McClelland (1788-1875), a fellow church member, is not easily identified as a relative so she may have been a boarder. And 13-year-old Sarah E Stoner---one of Rebecca's nieces?

Rebecca Stoner Rosen (1838-1912), probably early 20th century.
Rebecca lived to be 74.


Their farm Maple Grove was in a community named Raphine, Virginia in Rockbridge County near the Augusta County line. The unusual name had been given to his family home by neighbor James E. A. Gibbs (1829-1902), famous as co-inventor of the Willcox Gibbs machine, a rotary hook chain-stitch sewing machine. Raphine Hall was derived from the Greek ραφις  rhaphis, (also raphis and rhapis) which means needle.

Rhapis excelsa a palm with needle-like leaves


The Rosen family at Maple Grove from Virginia Quilts

The caption tells us this paper photo dates to 1850 but clothing and photographic format indicates it's much later in the 19th century if not early 20th. Rebecca may be the woman on the left. The women wearing hats are visitors, perhaps daughters.

Granddaughter Margaret Rosen Fulwider Mynes (1920-2012) showed her family quilts
to the Virginia project team. She and the documenters thought the first two might
be from 1870; the one on the right from 1880. Margaret was the daughter of Grace Lola Rosen Fulwider, Rebecca's youngest.

The triple sash and cornerstone set is typical of Southern quilts made
after 1880, which is likely to be the date of all three. As Rebecca lived until
1912 these 1880-1900 quilts could all have been her work as Margaret thought.

The 1900 census captured them living with daughter Grace Lola who was 24
and a boarder. The numbers to the left of the word Virginia on Rebecca's line indicate they'd been married 44 years; she'd given birth to 7 children and 4 were still living.


Dorothea Lange photo, 1936
Library of Congress