Open Wreath for Hester Ann Wilkins Davis by Becky Collis
Hester was Allen Davis’s second wife. This wealthy Maryland plantation master owned land worth about $45,000 according to the 1850 census. The slave schedule that year lists 27 people but he is said in other sources to have held 60 or 100 or more enslaved people. Davis, knowledgeable about new agricultural methods, was president of the state Agricultural Society and prospered from progressive ideas at their plantation named Greenwood in Montgomery County, Maryland.
Hester’s family had been
in city retail business. Father William Wilkins (1768-1832) was partners with
his brother in a Baltimore Street store. Mother Achsah Goodwin Wilkins
(1775-1854) is known for her chintz coverlet production. She and her workshop
produced dozens of exemplary bedcoverings when Hester was a young woman.
Stitchers probably included family members with enslaved and free-Black
seamstresses. William Rush Dunton photographed many surviving examples for his
1945 book Old Quilts.
Hester’s middle daughter Mary Dorsey Davis (1845-1939) once owned this unquilted bedcover, typical of her grandmother’s workshop in distinctive design. The Smithsonian owns another of Mary’s bedcovers, inked in the corner “A.G. Wilkins 1820/M.D. Davis 1890” long after the piece was finished.
https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/object/nmah_556248
Hester kept a diary in weeks before the War began until the end of 1864 (later volumes may have been lost.) Her opinions were typical of many Marylanders, particularly those who benefitted from slavery. She did not wish Maryland to secede (it never did) but this slaveholder was opposed to abolition, blaming Northern antislavery activists and Lincoln’s administration for war’s onset. “I am no admirer of Lincoln or his cabinet….the present Cabinet are lamentably deficient.”
She wrote her daughters: “I believe the majority [of Baltimoreans] are for the Union but all opposed to war…the most fearful excitement prevails every where.”
Son William informed sister Rebecca a month after Fort Sumter: “For your benefit I hereby announce myself, henceforth, a straightout ‘Southern Rights’ man….I can no longer support a man whose avowed intention is to subjugate the South.”
When the conflict began the house had nine enslaved maids and a cook. Hester recorded that their work freed her to devote time to “the supervision of sewing required to keep a large family clad” (counting slaves young and old as part of that family.) Supervising the clothing production was often the purview of the plantation mistress as avoiding fabric waste was a major goal. Another was keeping sharp scissors out of the hands of women with a grudge but Hester from the Wilkins family of chintz applique artists may have had a particular talent as a seamstress.
Hester’s letters to son William include a harrowing episode when 12-year-old Esther fell into the plantation’s grain mill as the wheel grabbed her dress. She managed to save herself by shredding the dress.
Can we call the Davis family Rebels? Their wartime actions seem quite pragmatic, like that of the majority of Maryland slaveholders. None of Hester’s three daughters married, a common post-war state. Were they as rebellious as brother William?
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