Baltimore Belles & Rebels #2: Baltimore Basket for Sidney Hall

 

Baltimore Belles & Rebels #2 Baltimore Basket by 

Becky Collis for Sidney Hall

Sidney Hall (about 1835-1921)

Winterthur Collection 

In 1857 painter Thomas Waterman Wood depicted 22-year-old Sidney Hall with her charges, Lily Tyson, 3 years old and Martha (Patty), 5.

1860 Census, Baltimore 

The household of Harriet Jolliffe Tyson &

James Ellicott Tyson (1816-1893), grain farmer, merchant & real estate investor.

Sidney here was 25. Her mother Rachel (65?) was also a servant in the Tyson home as was S. M. Duvall, a 31-year-old man. All three are classified by race as M for mulatto or mixed race. In 1860 Baltimore was home to the largest free black population in the U.S.: 25,700 people. We know these servants were considered free as the census did not list enslaved people by name. 

Their city home was on McCulloh Street, a once-elegant neighborhood of townhomes with the city’s characteristic marble stoops. 

We cannot find out much about Sidney herself. Was she a rebel? Her employers, the Tysons certainly had a family tradition of rebellion.  

Lily & Patty’s grandmother Martha Ellicott Tyson (1795-1873)

As you might guess by her subdued silk gown and white cap Martha was a Quaker.

James Ellicott Tyson’s mother was a well-known Baltimore rebel. Martha Ellicott Tyson’s family founded Ellicott’s Mills, a significant spot in Maryland agricultural history as the Ellicotts advocated grain over the tobacco that was so hard on the soil. They pioneered uses of fertilizers and refused to use slave labor.

 

Maryland Center for History and Culture 

Ellicott’s First Mills by Benjamin Latrobe

Martha married Nathan Tyson (1787-1867) and gave birth to twelve children yet found time to dedicate to causes such as abolition, women’s rights and education. She was a co-founder of Swarthmore College during the Civil War.

 

Stone meeting house built in 1843

Martha was a member of the rural Little Falls Friends Meetinghouse whose members had been required to free their slaves in 1800 as abolitionist ideas spread among the Quakers. She also attended the Baltimore Quaker Meeting where she was chosen an elder and later in life a minister. Martha lived to see the end of the Civil War and the fulfillment of her lifelong work towards abolition. Sidney outlived her by many decades. The 1920 census found Sidney one of 23 elderly residents of the African M.E. Church Home (the Bethel Home) at 207 Aisquith Street. 

1920 The Bethel Home

Sidney Hall died soon after that census at 86. Is this Sidney noted in a Find-A-Grave site with a clipping telling us about the funeral of a woman with five daughters and 48 grandchildren?

 

Baltimore Basket by Denniele Bohannon

The Block

Another classic Baltimore style of the simpler type 

Print these on 8-1/2" x 11" sheets.

 Piece, applique or cut stripes for the basket.

Bev Evans found a striped basket block

with a fussy-cut print.