Washington Whirlwind #12: Windblown Square

 

Washington Whirlwind #12 by Jeanne Arnieri.

 Windblown Square recalls the Lincoln family's life after the White House years.

Heritage Auction

Thomas "Tad" Lincoln at about 14 in 1867

Mary Todd Lincoln left with youngest son Thomas "Tad" for company tried to establish a life as the widow of a martyred and idolized President.

Early 1870s

Spiritualism continued to offer some solace in her windblown years. Charlatan photographer William H. Mumler captured her with this photo superimposing Lincoln's spirit on her portrait. Gullible people like Mary always ready to believe in alternate realities took this kind of "evidence" as Spiritualist gospel.

Never satisfied in one place very long Mary began her new life in Chicago, where eldest son Robert lived, buying a house at what is now 1238 West Washington Boulevard, east of Union Park. 

Chicago

Windblown Square, the plan by Becky Brown

After a restless year she rented it out and traveled to Europe. She never returned to live in the house but continued to store trunks and boxes there. She also brought much baggage with her on extended visits to Europe beginning in October, 1868. Being both a hoarder and a woman never content for long in one spot is a bad combination of disorders. And now we can add severe depression to that list of mental problems.

"I am so miserable, I feel like taking my own life. My darling boy, my Taddie alone, I fully believe prevents the deed....I am positively dying with a broken heart and the probability is that I shall be living but a very short time."       Mary Lincoln to Elizabeth Keckly, January 12, 1868

Thomas "Tad" Lincoln in Frankfurt, Germany at 16 in 1869.

He spent about 2 years in a German boarding school.

Tad looking like a German student with a buzz cut. As a former special education teacher I fret about him in German schools. He was hard to understand in English and had an obvious learning disability....

How did German boarding school go?

Tad, about 1870. 

Mary and Tad returned to the U.S.in 1871.

July, 1871

Tad's health deteriorated and Mary worried about a cold he'd caught on the ocean voyage in the winter of 1870-1871. In another devastating blow, Tad died of a lung disorder a few months later.  

Windblown Square by Denniele Bohannon

Mourning cockade

Mary's history of bereavement as widow of an idolized American martyr should have made her a sympathetic figure in the public eye but as they say about those with narcissistic personalities: She was her own worst enemy. Once obsessive about clothing she spent her post-war years obsessing about finances. Although she had adequate resources she publicly hounded Congress for a pension and complained about the generous amount once it was granted. Anxious about her money she pinned securities, bonds and cash to her undergarments, behavior that alarmed her only surviving son attorney Robert who realized it was public knowledge and she was in danger of being attacked. He hired a bodyguard to follow her in secret. 

Lincoln Financial Group

Mary Lincoln's stationery 1867

"A piece in the morning Tribune, signed 'B' ...says there is no doubt Mrs. L is deranged and had been for years past and will end her life in a lunatic asylum." 

Mary Lincoln letter to Elizabeth Keckly, October 9, 1867

Windblown Square by Elsie Ridgley 

Bellevue Place

If public opinion deemed her insane Robert agreed and had her institutionalized for what he believed to be her own good in 1875. She spent three months at Bellevue Place Sanitarium in Batavia, Illinois, working to free herself, persuading sister Elizabeth and her husband Ninian Edwards to accept responsibility for her, now "restored to reason." 

After one more lonely trip to Europe, she spent her last years in the care of the Edwards relatives who gave her a home in Springfield. Mary occupied her days sifting through her fabrics in her trunks and boxes---dress silks and laces a widow could never wear; draperies for houses she did not live in. She died in July, 1882.

Windblown Square by Elsie Ridgley

We'll give Julia Taft Bayne the last word. In closing out her memoir of the Tafts and the Lincolns she wrote of the assassination's effect on the former First Lady:

"Mrs Lincoln was not fitted to withstand a violent blow to her emotions. If....she could not stand even the sight of Willie's playmates, what would be the result of [that] awful shock....She literally went wild with sorrow. I do not believe her mind ever fully recovered its poise."

Julia with Calvin Coolidge in 1928

Julia, our reporter on the Lincoln family, grew up to marry Congregational minister John Strawn Bayne from Illinois in 1869. They had four sons and a daughter during their midwest postings. Brother Horatio II "Bud" became an accountant and died in Rockford, Illinois in 1915. He was said to look much like their cousin William Howard Taft, President from 1909 to 1913 (a rather distant cousin.)  Halsey "Holly," also went into banking and died in 1897. Youngest brother William lived in Chicago.

Do read Julia Taft Bayne's Tad Lincoln's Father, on which this year's BOM was based. It's been reprinted by the University of Nebraska Press's Bison Books.

https://books.google.com/books?id=F5UaW8odX0kC&printsec=frontcover&dq=tad+lincolns+father&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwi70Ij4mcP9AhUGHTQIHUwIB50Q6AF6BAgEEAI#v=onepage&q=tad%20lincolns%20father&f=false 

The Block

Uh oh! I've been so distracted lately I forgot to post the actual pattern.

Sorry!

1875

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2023/01/mary-lincoln-had-fabric-problem.html

Washington Whirlwind, all 12 blocks by Elsie Ridgley

And Jeanne Arnieri

The story of the Lincoln White House and Tad and his mother turned out

to be a lot sadder than I expected. I think if Tad were living today we could do

a lot for him---Special Education and surgery might have made his life happier and longer.

 His mother, whom I have always been curious about, is a different story. She looks to

have been a classic Narcissist with a personality disorder that seems incurable.

Hope next year's BOM's are more cheerful!

I think you will enjoy the pieced Petticoat Press.

Washington Whirlwind: Links to the 2024 Pieced BOM

 

Links to the dozen 2024 blocks: 

Introduction with sets, etc.

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2023/12/2024-pieced-bom-washington-whirlwind.html

See our Facebook Group and post your blocks!

WashingtonWhirlwindQuilt

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2682765051880664 

Whirlwind by Janet Gluesenkamp

Civil War Quilts: Washington Whirlwind #1: Whirlwind

Boy's Playmate by Laura Stewart

Civil War Quilts: Washington Whirlwind #2: Boy's Playmate

Lincoln's Platform by Cindy Brouillard

Civil War Quilts: Washington Whirlwind #3: Lincoln's Platform

4 Next Door Neighbor by Denniele Bohannon

Civil War Quilts: Washington Whirlwind #4: Next Door Neighbor

5 Road to the White House by Heidi Kapszukiewicz

Civil War Quilts: Washington Whirlwind #5: Road to the White House

6 Columbian Puzzle by Roberta Goulding Brunet

Civil War Quilts: Washington Whirlwind #6: Columbian Puzzle

7 Whirling Star by Marie Boop

Civil War Quilts: Washington Whirlwind # 7: Whirling Star

8 White House Steps by Laura Stuart

Civil War Quilts: Washington Whirlwind #8: White House Steps

Lady in the White House by Janet Nagy Hanley

Civil War Quilts: Washington Whirlwind # 9: Lady in the White House

10 President's Block by Erica Cannon

Civil War Quilts: Washington Whirlwind #10: President's Block

11 Road to the White House by Jeanne Arnieri

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2024/11/washington-whirlwind-11-road-to-white.html

#12 Windblown Square by Elsie Ridgley

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2024/12/washington-whirlwind-12-windblown-square.html

You can buy a pattern packet for Washington Whirlwind ---14 pages to print yourself for $12.
https://www.etsy.com/listing/1614892877/washington-whirlwind-blockofthemonth

And post your progress on our Facebook group page: WashingtonWhirlwindQuilt

https://www.facebook.com/groups/2682765051880664

Washington Whirlwind #11 Road To the White House (& Away)

                                                        

Washington Whirlwind #11

Road To the White House (& Away) by Jeanne Arnieri

Roads go two ways. This month's block remembers the painful road away from the White House that Mary Todd Lincoln and her sons took after Lincoln's assassination. They were required to vacate the family quarters for new President Andrew Johnson, wife Eliza, their grown daughters and children.

Sister Elizabeth Todd Edwards and friend Elizabeth Keckly tried to help the ex-First Lady with her plans and packing but getting Mary Lincoln to focus on a future without her husband was difficult. 

The nation mourned

Almost six weeks passed before the Johnsons could move into the Executive Mansion. The Lincolns left for Chicago on the train with "scarcely a friend to tell her good-by," recalled Elizabeth Keckly when she dictated her memoir. She accompanied Mrs. Lincoln as she "passed down the public stairway, entered her carriage, and quietly drove to the depot where we took the cars. The silence was almost painful."

Brady Studios, 1863

Mary Lincoln's eccentricities---her self-absorption, post-traumatic stress syndrome and tendencies to hoard--- interfered with the orderly transition. Objects with links to her husband were given away because of painful associations; lack of supervision enabled souvenir seekers to strip the White House and her inability to choose wisely caused arguments with eldest son Robert, which Elizabeth Keckly remembered.

Robert "tried without avail to influence his mother to set fire to her vast stores of old goods. ‘What are you going to do with that old dress, mother?' he would ask. ‘Never mind, Robert, I will find use for it. You do not understand this business.’

Robert Todd Lincoln (1843-1926)

Robert, the only son who survived her, was often at odds with Mary,

rarely placating her or tolerating her tantrums as his father had done.

Elizabeth remembered his rather harsh advice about White House souvenirs:

"I wish to heaven the car would take fire in which you place these boxes for transportation to Chicago, and burn all of your old plunder up;’ and then, with an impatient gesture, he would turn on his heel and leave the room."

Road To the White House

Elsie's purple version

The boxes were full of her "dresses" at a time when the word could mean the yardage as well as the finished garment, fabric Mary would never wear again in her conspicuous mourning but fabric she transported many yards from home to home for the rest of her life. 

Typical railroad train, "the cars" of the time, this one the Lincoln

funeral train that took his remains and son Willie's back to Springfield,

 Illinois to inter him in early May. Mary did not travel to the interment but Robert did.

Lake Michigan, the Chicago River and the city before the 1871 Fire

Mary and Tad began housekeeping in Chicago where Robert was settling into a life as independent of his mother as he could create.

Road To the White House by Denniele Bohannon

Diarist Benjamin Brown French who had worked closely with her for four years wrote on May 24th, 1865:

“Mary Lincoln left the city …I went up and bade her good-by, and felt really very sad, although she has given me a world of trouble. I think the sudden and awful death of the President somewhat unhinged her mind, for at times she has exhibited all the symptoms of madness…it is well for the nation that she is not longer in the White House.”

After years of being rather circumspect about the First Lady he wrote: “It is is not proper that I should write down, even here, all I know! May God have her in his keeping, and make her a better woman." He continued to act as the official introducing the Johnson Presidential women at public events.

"Oh how different it is to the introductions to Mrs. Lincoln! She sought to put on the airs of an Empress – these ladies are plain, ladylike, republican ladies, their dresses rich but modest and unassuming.”

Tennessee State Museum Collection

Andrew & Eliza Johnson with daughters Martha & Mary in 1843

The Block

Road To the White House by Elsie Ridgley

Farm Journal called this orderly string quilt variation 

Road to the White House (BlockBase 1693)

The Broken Sugar Bowl could refer to all the White House

china pilfered by the public in the weeks after Lincoln's death.

 

Becky Brown says:

Elsie's making two versions

Jeanne's sampler of 12 blocks.

One more to go---December 11th.