Petticoat Press #11: Herald Square for Mary Clemmer Ames

Petticoat Press #11: Herald Square for Mary Clemmer Ames

by Jeanne Arnieri

Mary Estella Clemmer Ames Hudson (1831-1884)

Mary Estella Clemmer was born in New York and grew up in Massachusetts. At 17 she married Presbyterian minister Daniel Ames who was dispatched to Winona, Minnesota. 

Herald Square by Becky Brown

When Civil War commenced Daniel became a chaplain and Mary accompanied him to Harper's Ferry, (West) Virginia in 1862. Mary published an account of the Battle of Maryland Heights, also called the Battle of Harper's Ferry, which surprised her at her door one morning.

"We were eating our breakfast in a comfortable home on Camp Hill on Saturday morning, the 13th of September, when we heard the quick, cruel ring of musketry cutting the air. We ran out upon the hill in the rear of the house overlooking the village below, London Heights [Loudoun Heights, the second highest mountain overlooking Harpers Ferry], the Shenandoah, the Potomac, the Heights of Maryland, a vast green precipitous wall, on the opposite shore. [Stonewall] Jackson had come."

View of the Potomac River from Maryland Heights

Confederate General Thomas Jonathan

 "Stonewall " Jackson (1824–1863)

"We knew the foe was advancing; we heard his hellish war cry; we heard Dixie shrieked by thousands of barefooted fiends."

Alta California, October, 1862

Her account of the battle, “The Battle of Harper’s Ferry As a Woman Saw It,” was published in The New York Evening Post on September 26, 1862 and widely copied afterwards...and embroidered upon over the years as in this drawing of her in heart of battle.

Herald Square by Denniele Bohannon

Mary relocated to Washington where like so many other women she tended to ill soldiers in her spare time and despaired of Union victory. Was she living with Ames at the time? She was certainly unhappy in her marriage and in her outlook in those years.

The Cary Sisters

The happiest days during her marriage were recalled as those she spent in New York as a guest of Phoebe and Alice Cary, sister poets.

Her second husband's memorial to her after her death 

included an 1863 letter to her friends Representative

Justin Morrill and his wife Ruth Swan Morrill.

After the war she began a regular column for the New York Independent titled "A Woman's Letter from Washington," later collected in a book Ten Years in Washington.

As was expected of "A Woman's Letter" her columns were full of fashion and gossip but she addressed politics as well.

Like many she was not a fan of Mary Todd Lincoln.

Read it here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=0EAIGA6XQ-4C&printsec=frontcover&dq=ten+years+washington+clemmer+ames&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwizt4KW39WEAxUVmIkEHaAgDoUQ6AF6BAgMEAI#v=onepage&q=ten%20years%20washington%20clemmer%20ames&f=true

In 1874 Daniel Ames divorced her in West Virginia.

She'd been earning her own living through journalism for years.

Mary Clemmer Ames became Mary Clemmer again.

She lived with her parents at 134 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington when the 1880 census taker came to call. Nine years after her divorce she married Edmund Hudson Washington, editor of The Army & Navy Register. He was said to be well-known but little about him appears in the records. They married in 1883 and she died the following year, of a cerebral hemorrhage (a stroke). Edmund thought it the result of hitting her head in a carriage accident, but she had been complaining about painful headaches for a while before the accident. Mary Clemmer died at 53 in August, 1884.

Edmund seems to have loved her very much as indicated by his published memorial.

The Block

Modified Herald Square, revised from Nancy Cabot's Herald Square.

Herald Square in New York City was home to the New York Herald. Mary

wrote for a smaller paper on a smaller square: The Utica Herald.

Utica

Herald Square by Elsie Ridgley. Elsie followed the original Nancy

Cabot pattern.

Becky Collis's Petticoat Press recently won a prize at her guild show.

Read More:

An American Woman's Life and Work: A Memorial of Mary Clemmer
https://books.google.com/books?id=zPo_AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=An+American+Woman%27s+Life+and+Work:+A+Memorial+of+Mary+Clemmer&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi-8dqe89aEAxX2mIkEHQL0BFQQ6AF6BAgIEAI#v=onepage&q&f=false

Liberty's Birds #8: New Orchards

 

Liberty's Birds #8: New Orchards by Denniele Bohannon

Sara Robinson returned to the ruined town of Lawrence in June, 1856 after traveling in the east hoping to convince politicians and some of her influential relatives to free her husband still jailed by the pro-slavery Kansans for treason.

She heard of the "Sack of Lawrence" in Chicago.

New Orchards by Becky Collis

Crossing the river on the rope ferry...

New Orchards by Elsie Ridgley

A girdled tree

The Missourians' vindictiveness is illustrated by her account of their taking the time to kill the new fruit orchards citizens had planted by girdling the small trees---removing all the bark in a circle around the trunk which prevents nutrients from traveling, a cut that eventually kills the tree.

The Block

                

A bird and a floral----

Applique Classic

Sandra Starley has a crib quilt in her collection featuring 

a similar pattern.

We might call that two-toned bird a robin.

We still plant fruit trees like peaches and apricots in Lawrence, but mostly the ornamental type. It's a rare spring that doesn't blast the blooms with a late freeze destroying our hopes of homegrown fruit.

Print the patterns out on 8-1/2 x 11" sheets.

Note the inch-square guide.

New Orchards by Susannah Pangelinan

in her sashing with four-patch cornerstones.

Elsie needed 13 blocks for her on-point set so she made 

4 blocks of a simple rose for the corners.

Last BOM next month #9.

Threads of Memory: Free Patterns For An Underground Railroad Quilt

 

Becky Brown

Threads of Memory Block # 8 

Jacksonville Star

We did a Block-of-the-Month series here in 2014 to offer an accurate pieced quilt design for stitchers interested in making a quilt to remember the Underground Railroad and American slavery.

Jean Stanclift

Threads of Memory Block #3

New Garden Star

Becky and Jean made two very different models.

And readers followed their own muses

Cathy at the St. Augustine Quilters

And Pat's

Here are free patterns as published 10 years ago or so.

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

Scroll down for links to the stories for each.

 Do note the inch-square guide in the patterns with templates and if 

it's not accurate adjust your printer interface so

your templates print the correct size.

1 Portsmouth Star for Ona Judge Staines

Portsmouth Star by Rosemary

2 Mercer County Star for Susan Lowe Wattles

3 New Garden Star for Catherine White Coffin

Kathleen at Temecula Quilts

4 Canada Star for Lucie Blackburn

Threads of Memory by Nanette Chopin Cook

5 Madison Star for Delia Webster

Madison Star from Terry

6 Salem Star for Charlotte Forten Grimke

7 Oberlin Star for the Oberlin Rescuers

8 Jacksonville Star for Emily Logan

Jacksonville Star by Richy

9 Lancaster Star for Deborah Simmons Coates

Lancaster Star by Betty

10 Britain's Star for Charlotte Henson

Britain's Star by Flo

11 St. Charles Star for Louisa Alexander

St.Charles Star by Jo

12 Rochester Star for Amy Post & Harriet Jacobs

See the true stories of real courageous women at  these 2014 posts:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/01/threads-of-memory-1-portsmouth-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/02/threads-of-memory-2-mercer-county-star.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/03/threads-of-memory-3-new-garden-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/04/threads-of-memory-4-canada-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/05/threads-of-memory-5-madison-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/06/threads-of-memory-6-salem-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/07/threads-of-memory-7-oberlin-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/08/threads-of-memory-8-jacksonville-star.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/09/threads-of-memory-9-lancaster-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/10/threads-of-memory-10-britains-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/11/threads-of-memory-11-st-charles-star.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/12/threads-of-memory-12-rochester-star-for.html

Terry designed a framed star for her setting design.

Monthly blocks in the center of each.