Liberty's Birds# 6: Carols & Oaths

 

Liberty's Birds# 6: Carols & Oaths by Becky Collis

On May 21, 1856 Missourians who were furious at the Free-State settlers refusal to leave the Kansas Territory raided the town of Lawrence. They burned the newspaper office, the hotel and Sara's newly built house on the hill.

Pro-slavery sympathizers rode into Lawrence under this flag.

Sara traveling in the East, hoping to release Charles from prison, heard about the catastrophe when she was in Chicago.

Carols & Oaths by Denneile Bohannon

It seems that Sara commissioned a photograph of the ruined town

 from which this wood etching was drawn but the daguerreotype is now missing. 

Her burnt-out house was on the crest of the ridge.

Carols & Oaths by Becky Collis

I'd imagine in the months following "The Sack of Lawrence" the purple coneflowers bloomed, ripened and invited the gold finches to snack, nature's consolation.

Pale Purple Coneflowers are a Kansas native.

Botanists have pepped up the color and the showiness.

Goldfinches love the late summer seeds.

The Block

A rose and a cardinal

now a cone flower & a gold finch

Carols & Oaths by Elsie Ridgley

The conclusion of Sara's book was quite effective in inspiring more Kansas immigrants.

Petticoat Press # 8: Star---Sara Jane Clark Lippincott

 

Petticoat Press # 8: Star for Sara Jane Clark Lippincott by Elsie Ridgley

Musée d’Orsay

Sara Jane Clark Lippincott (1823-1904) 

Tintype from Boston firm Southworth & Hawes about 1850

In 1850 Sara Clark was a rising journalism star, a poet and reporter who gained fame in the 1840s when she was in her twenties, using the penname Grace Greenwood. At the end of the decade she was assistant editor at the monthly periodical Godey's Lady's Book published in Philadelphia, concerned with fashion, gossip and light literature.

.

But she also wrote for The National Era, a Washington antislavery weekly---

where Harriet Beecher Stowe's Uncle Tom's Log Cabin was first published as a serial.

BOSTON, November 9, 1850 " The universal excitement, on the Fugitive Slave bill, still continues; and this is well. It is a strong outburst of generous and genuine popular feeling, in which every lover of freedom and justice must exult. The great Northern heart is awakened at last."

Godey's editor Sarah Josepha Hale fired her for her antislavery writings. Either Godey's or abolition---she chose antislavery and moved to Washington, writing for the National Era and the Saturday Evening Post.

 Star for Sara Jane Clark Lippincott by Denniele Bohannon

Sara was born in Pompey, New York and attended good schools, among them the Greenwood Institute in New Brighton, Pennsylvania where her physician father had established a practice. In 1853 at 30 years old she married Philadelphian Leander K. Lippincott (1831-1896), also a newspaper writer and they had a daughter Ann Grace, born in Michigan in 1855. Together the Lippincotts published and wrote periodicals for children.

Star by Becky Collis

When the Civil War began Sara spent her time lecturing for Union causes, such as the Sanitary Commission, which raised money for hospitalized soldiers, earning the praise of Abraham Lincoln who called her "Grace Greenwood, the Patriot.".

1864

"A rabid Unionist and a rabider Abolitionist"

After the war she continued to work for newspapers such as New York's Tribune and Times.

Portrait probably after the war. She has a "fringe," the post-war hair fashion.

The Divorce Plot comes up again after the war. Husband Leander was apparently a philanderer and a thief, fired from his position at the patent office for misappropriation and accused of land fraud.

No record of a divorce has been found but both fled to Europe (separately.)

Star by Becky Brown

(She has great skill at combining edgy fabrics and making it work!)

She died in 1904 at her daughter's home in New Rochelle, New York

This New York Times obituary tells us she was FIRST at many things,

all probably unlikely. It is easier to look for firsts than analyze a woman's writing career.

A better memory of her from Frederick Douglass who was

being assailed in New York in 1877. She bravely and ably defended him.

The Block

Novelist Beth Gutcheon, discovering quilt blocks in the mid-1970s, named this one "Star."

 Star for Sara Jane Clark Lippincott by Jeanne Arnieri

Liberty's Birds #5: Song For Freedom

 

Liberty's Birds #5: Song For Freedom by Elsie Ridgley

Nature singing a song for freedom...

from the introduction to Sara's Kansas:

Its Interior and Exterior Life

The Robinsons and dozens of other New Englanders came to Kansas so eligible male voters could cast an honest vote for the territory's establishment as a free state according to Douglas's 1854 Kansas/Nebraska Act.

Senator Stephen A. Douglas caricatured as a bushwhacker or southern intruder. 

He hoped to ride his Kansas Nebraska Act to the presidency 

His plans quickly went awry when pro-slavery activists from Missouri to Alabama decided to fight anti-slavery immigrants at the ballot box by staking false claims, voting illegally and sinking to terrorizing and killing the valid voters.

Voter fraud was rampant as pro-slavery southerners swarmed

into Kansas on election day electing a bogus legislature.

 Song For Freedom by Barbara Brackman

 The Free-State leaders were arrested for treason after they formed a second legislature. Charles Robinson who'd been elected Free-State Governor, was a specific target.

Charles arrested with Sara protesting, an illustration that undoubtedly displeased her. She was not one to beg on her knees. Instead as she camped out near his open-air prison waiting for his release, she wrote a book based on her journals during the first months of her Kansas life.

Kansas: Its Interior and Exterior Life was published in October, 1856 and became a best seller calling much attention to the Kansas Troubles as it went through ten editions in the 19th century.

 Song For Freedom by Denniele Bohannon

Bleeding Kansas was national news.

The Block

The inspiration applique

You don't often see anything as good as this block in online 

auctions anymore. I didn't buy it but it's the inspiration for

 our flag-waving chickadee this month.

Donna Losko Stickovich was the lucky bidder.

 Song For Freedom 

Becky Collis

Why a chickadee? Well, they're cute and plump

and they sing their song all year round here.

Susannah's set #2

Susannah's Set #1

I hope you have a good idea of how you are going to set these blocks. Susannah did two sets. The one directly above is the Official Set. Do note that some blocks are oriented on the diagonal for the corners and some on the square. For her second set she oriented them all on the square so she could add a sash.

Petticoat Press #7: The Freeman for Mary Ann Shadd Cary

Petticoat Press #7: The Freeman for Mary Ann Shadd Cary 

by Jeanne Arnieri

Mary Ann Camberton Shadd Cary (1823 –1893)

The only photo of Mary Shadd yet found, 

Photoshopped to be a little sharper.

Mary Ann Shadd was born a free-Black in Delaware, the eldest of 13 children of Harriet Parnell and Abraham Shadd, a shoemaker. In the early 1830s after Delaware banned school for African-American children the Shadds moved to West Chester, Pennsylvania.

The 1850 census tells us Mary in her late 20s was not living at home, probably boarding out to teach.

 Ten siblings were there with her grandmother Mary Burton for whom she was named.

 Abraham was prosperous; worth $5,000, and Grandmother Burton $500.

The Freeman by Denniele Bohannon

Once the Fugitive Slave Act passed in 1850 the Shadds understood that their status as citizens of the United States was dramatically changed. They could be kidnapped and sold South. Anyone who aided them was also considered a criminal. The family moved across the Canadian border to Windsor, Ontario in 1853 following Mary and her brother Isaac.

The Freeman by Becky Brown

In her early thirties Mary published a pamphlet countering slave holders' claims that Canada was a miserable refuge for escaping people. Teaching continued to occupy her time but she saw a need for a Canadian newspaper directed at the migrant Black reader and in 1853 became editor and publisher of the weekly Provincial Freeman with men's names on the masthead. Brother Isaac and sister Amelia were also involved in getting out the paper.

1854, The Liberator

In 1856 she married Toronto barber Thomas F. Cary, also assisting with the newspaper. They had a daughter Sarah Elizabeth and while Mary was pregnant with son Linton Shadd Cary her husband died. The Provincial Freeman in financial difficulties ceased publication in the late 1850s. Once Linton was born and portents of Civil War sounded in the U.S. Mary and the children moved to Washington City. During the war she acted as a recruiting agent.

The 1880 census in Washington D.C. shows the Cary family with a young boarder.

The Freeman by Elsie Ridgley

1421 W Street NW

Mary Ann's pretty brick house in Washington has a plaque recalling her.

The Freeman by Denniele Bohannon

Mary Ann was apparently the first Black woman to enroll in law school, although it took her years to finish her degree at Howard University graduating at the age of 60 in 1883.

The Block

 

Here's the BlockBase source---no name; no publication. Let's name it The Freeman for her newspaper.

The Freeman by Becky Collis

Read More:

Mary Ann Shadd, A Plea for Emigration

https://books.google.com/books?id=WcMpAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Mary+Ann+Shadd+A+Plea+for+Emigration,+or+Notes+on+Canada+West&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjrw56Lt_eEAxXtpokEHcVQAWYQ6AF6BAgOEAI#v=onepage&q&f=false