Block #3
New Garden Star by
Jean Stanclift
New
Garden Star layers the classic eight-pointed star atop a four-pointed star.
The new star pattern is named for the New Garden Meeting House where Catherine Coffin, her family and friends offered help to many fugitive slaves. Their surviving minute book records the day-to-day financial details of the Underground Railroad, as in an 1849 entry about efforts "to procure a home for Marian Danse." The committee reported that "she has been removed to Canada at an expense of $20."
The patterns were free online for two years but now I am
offering them for sale in two formats
at my Etsy shop. Buy a PDF or a Paper Pattern through the
mail here:
New Garden Friends' Meeting House, Indiana
About 2008
The new star pattern is named for the New Garden Meeting House where Catherine Coffin, her family and friends offered help to many fugitive slaves. Their surviving minute book records the day-to-day financial details of the Underground Railroad, as in an 1849 entry about efforts "to procure a home for Marian Danse." The committee reported that "she has been removed to Canada at an expense of $20."
Catherine White Coffin in her 70s,
portrait from her
husband's 1876 book.
In 1826, young Catherine White Coffin, husband Levi and baby
Jesse moved from New Garden, North Carolina, to Indiana for reasons that remain
a bit mysterious. Like other westering couples they hoped to prosper. Levi
flourished on the frontier, first as a merchant and later as a manufacturer of
linseed oil. They chose the town of Newport because Quaker family and friends
from Guilford County had also moved there, establishing a nearby meeting house they
named New Garden after their old home.
In a speech towards the end of his life Levi said North
Carolina had become dangerous for the antislavery Quakers. In his autobiography
he claimed to be surprised that the highway near his new home was a branch of
what came to be known as the Underground Railroad. His protestation of
ignorance has a false ring, however. For years members of their North Carolina
community had been cautiously smuggling runaway slaves north to Friends in
Richmond, Indiana. Catherine and Levi must have carefully chosen their new home
north of Richmond. Thanks to their generosity, courage and organizational
skills, the number of fugitives escaping through eastern Indiana increased
significantly.
The Coffin's Federal-style brick house, built in 1839,
overlooks highway 27 in Fountain City, Indiana, the town they knew as Newport.
It was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1966, restored and
opened as a public museum in 1970 under the Indiana State Museum System
The yellow star on the eastern border of Indiana is
the general location of the Coffin's Indiana home.
Block #3
New Garden Star by
Dustin Cecil
(I FORGOT to post this yesterday, sorry you fans of D.C)
Levi Coffin loved the metaphor of an underground railroad
for the network of neighbors who helped escapees travel north. Of Newport he
wrote, "The roads were always in running order, the connections were good,
the conductors active and zealous, and there was no lack of passengers."
"Aunt Katy" Coffin (1803-1881) was at the heart of
the Newport trunk line. "There never was a night too cold, or dark or
rainy, for her to get up at any hour, and prepare a meal for the poor
fugitives….many a time 12, 15, and even 17 sat down," recalled her husband
at their fiftieth wedding anniversary party. In the twenty years they lived in
Newport, Catherine gave birth to five more children, two girls and three boys,
so there was always a baby or toddler to care for in addition to numerous
houseguests. She organized a sewing society that stitched clothes for
fugitives. Agents would meet ragged runaways to assess clothing needs and sizes
and then choose garments from the Antislavery Sewing Society depository at the
Coffin house.
Catherine was a woman "who wouldn't scare worth a
cent," Levi bragged. Despite death threats, "they were never in the
least terrified." As the years passed, the Quakers' Underground Railroad
activities became accepted and they had little to fear in Newport. The
"conductors" were politically
and financially powerful and their Quaker neighbors, even those who felt no
call to harbor ex-slaves, were not inclined to report fugitives to the sheriff.
New Garden Star by
Becky Brown
Nathan Coggswell remembered transporting refugees in his ox
cart north towards Canada. Most came to him from the Coffins' organization.
"When there were women and children we had to rig out a covered wagon. We
sometimes hung chairs, spinning wheels and other articles on the wagon to give
the outfit the appearance of movers."
Coggswell described the network of
friends. "I knew every person between Richmond, Indiana and Michigan who
would take us in and keep us all night….We talked over the situation freely
among ourselves, but said little or nothing to others. We had no signs or
secret words." During the 1840s and 1850s as national consciousness of
slavery's evils developed, the need for secrecy in eastern Indiana subsided.
"It was soon considered a disgrace to interrupt a colored person. The
danger was about over."
New Garden Star by
Becky Brown
By then the Coffins had moved on to Cincinnati, again for
vague reasons. Their 1847 visit was planned to be temporary but became
permanent. Antislavery leaders requested Levi's help in running a store selling
goods made by free labor there.
Kentucky runaway Henry May had escaped, says the ad,
"in all probability to Cincinnati, Ohio." 1838.
But Cincinnati was the center of Underground
Railroad activity along the Ohio/ Kentucky border. Unlike Newport, where the
community agreed to ignore illegal activities, the river town was divided
between antislavery and proslavery activists. Refugees crossing into the city
were followed by masters who enlisted the authorities to return their human
property and arrest anyone who helped in the escape.
Levi Coffin, 1865
It seems that the Underground Railroad needed the Coffin's
leadership and courage not so much for a store, but for the more dangerous job
of smuggling refugees. Again Catherine fed and clothed people during their
first days of freedom, but her Cincinnati house had a larger attic than the one
in Newport. The 1860 census finds them maintaining a boarding house for 29 men
and women ranging from 2 to 50 years old, an excellent cover for a underground
railroad station.
The Quaker standing in the back row is thought to be Levi Coffin
and the bearded man at top right Jonathan Cable,
who assisted Coffin. The runaway family may be a group Coffin
recalled in his memoirs.
Read the excerpt from Coffin's book here:
Read more about the photo at the Fulton Sun:
In 1852 Harriet Beecher Stowe published Life Among the
Lowly, the newspaper serial that came to be known as Uncle Tom's Cabin.
Like many fiction writers, she drew composite characters based on real people.
Her kind Indiana Quakers named Simeon and Rachel Halliday have much in common
with the Coffins. The couple known for their secretiveness became public
figures.
Rachel Halliday from Uncle Tom's Cabin
The Coffin's tombstone, raised as
"A Tribute from the Colored People of Cincinnati,"
remembers Catherine with
"Her Work Well Done."
Block #3
New Garden Star by
Dustin Cecil in last year's Moda collection
Civil War Jubilee
(Forgot to post this too yesterday)
Make a Quilt a Month
Set nine New Garden Star blocks side by side with a 3" border to create a
42" quilt. Alternate five blocks with one background and four with another and
you will get a checkerboard effect behind the stars.
What can we learn about the Underground Railroad from Catherine Coffin's story?
The Coffin network of conductors was based on personal acquaintance, a chain of stations. As Nathan Coggswell wrote, "I knew every person between Richmond, Indiana and Michigan who would take us in and keep us all night….We had no signs or secret words."
What can we learn about the Underground Railroad from Catherine Coffin's story?
The Coffin network of conductors was based on personal acquaintance, a chain of stations. As Nathan Coggswell wrote, "I knew every person between Richmond, Indiana and Michigan who would take us in and keep us all night….We had no signs or secret words."
LINKS
Levi Coffin House is an Indiana State Historic Site, open to the public.http://indianamuseum.org/explore/levi-coffin-house
Read about the free-labor cotton business at the Quaker Quilts blog by and Mary Holton Robare & Lynda Salter Chenowith:
http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/2013/07/levi-coffin-and-free-labor-cotton-goods_15.html
PRIMARY SOURCES---MEMOIRS & MANUSCRIPTS
Catherine Coffin's husband Levi published his autobiography
in 1876. Many online book sites contain the full text of Reminiscences of
Levi Coffin, the Reputed President of the Underground Railroad (Cincinnati:
Western Tract Society, 1876) Click on this link to see an 1880 version of
the book.
Documenting the American South (docsouth.com) is a digital
publishing initiative sponsored by the University Library at the University
of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
with full text versions of materials from their collection and others.
Click
this link to their home page and search by authors, titles or collections.
Levi Coffin's cousin Addison
also wrote an autobiography about his work on the Underground Railroad. See the full
text of Life and Travels of Addison Coffin Written by Himself
(Cleveland: W, G. Hubbard, 1897) by going to Google Books.http://books.google.com/books?id=9ZMJKMXqjM4C&pg=PA2&lpg=PA2&dq=Life+and+Travels+of+Addison+Coffin&source=bl&ots=X8j_SYvTJH&sig=SKs04lQcCXCTW75kHws0G9FlAgY&hl=en&sa=X&ei=IRLoUtfmKI_xqQHEloGQBQ&ved=0CGEQ6AEwCg#v=onepage&q=Life%20and%20Travels%20of%20Addison%20Coffin&f=false
You can read about the Coffins in their friend Laura Smith Haviland's autobiography, A Woman's Life-Work: Labors and Experiences of Laura S. Haviland. (Walden & Stowe, 1882) which is also available online at Google Books.
http://books.google.com/books?id=LV7hAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Laura+Smith+Haviland.&hl=en&sa=X&ei=oxLoUpjFBI-0rgGh9YH4Bg&ved=0CDMQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q=Laura%20Smith%20Haviland.&f=false
The Indiana Private Academic Library Network of Indiana (PALNI) has a remarkable collection of online manuscripts including the "Record of the Minutes of the New Garden Branch of the Committee on the Concerns of People of Color." To read these handwritten records, which begin after the Coffins moved to Cincinnati, click
http://replica.palni.edu/cdm4/document.php?CISOROOT=/ecplow&CISOPTR=35177&REC=17
The PALNI website also has more information about Catherine Coffin in the local history collection filed under the name of Robert Nixon Huff. Look for her obituary among the other materials from Wayne County.
http://replica.palni.edu/cdm4/search.php
Click on the above link, which will bring you to the search page for PALNI and type the name Catherine Coffin in the search box. Then hit search. Click on the Huff collection (article 5). On the next page, scroll down the menu on the left until you see her name.
