Varina Davis's Drapes?

Fair goers in 1918

Lincoln, Nebraska

Quilts have always been a state fair feature. Visitors to Nebraska's 1916 State Fair viewed 18 "woven quilts"---antique bedcoverings, we can guess, lumped together in the reporter's view.

"One of the patchwork coverings, has the following little story pinned on it:

'During the civil war a raid was made on Jeff Davis' home. The red pieces in the quilt are from the curtain in his library. My father George W. Thompson, a soldier in the civil war, sent this home after the raid. The quilt was made fifty years ago (1866).' 

Note and quilt from Mrs. W. R. Davis of University Place.

University Place, adjacent to Nebraska Wesleyan University

The Confederate White House in Richmond,

occupied by the Union Army in April 1865.

Did George Thompson take a scissors to the drapes at the Davis home in Richmond in 1865?

Maj.General George Ord and staff on the South Portico of the 

White House of the Confederacy, 1865, Library of Congress.

Lace curtains flutter in the breeze here.

A few days after the capture of Richmond Abraham Lincoln and son Tad visited the Davis house.

Civil War memory....

How accurate?

With common names like Davis and Thompson it's difficult to follow up.

Yankee Notions #10: Thrifty

Yankee Notions #10: Thrifty by Denniele Bohannon

This simple nine-patch with four-patches in the corners can symbolize

the quilt's iconic role as a thrifty craft.

From the collections of Historic New England

While Southerners might view Yankees as avaricious and miserly

Northerners liked to think of themselves as thrifty.

"What's more thrifty than a scrappy quilt?" ask those who've never paid $12.50 for a yard of fabric.

Harriet Beecher Stowe, the New England villain in many a Southern mind, gave readers a "little preliminary instruction" in regional quilt traditions in her 1859 book The Minister's Wooing.

"The good wives of New England, impressed with that thrifty orthodoxy of economy which forbids to waste the merest trifle, had a habit of saving every scrap clipped out in the fashioning of household garments, and these they cut into fanciful pattems and constructed of these rainbow shapes and quaint traceries, the arrangement of which became one of their few fine arts. Many a maiden, as she sorted and arranged fluttering bits of green, yellow, red, and blue, felt rising in her breast a passion for somewhat vague and unknown, which came out at length in a new pattern of patchwork. 

Lockport Batting booklet 1930s

Thanks, Harriet, for the durable imagery

of Colonial New England

"Collections of these tiny fragments were always ready to fill an hour when there was nothing else to do; and as the maiden chatted with her beau, her busy flying needle stitched together those pretty bits, which, little in themselves, were destined, by gradual unions and accretions, to bring about at last substantial beauty, warmth, and comfort,— emblems thus of that household life which is to be brought to stability and beauty by reverent economy in husbanding and tact in arranging the little useful and agreeable morsels of daily existence."

Where is Dorothy Parker when you need her?

The Block

 Thrifty by Becky Brown

The simple arrangement is not something you see in the 19th century.

 It was first published in the Kansas City Star in 1939.

Cutting the 12" Finished Block

A - Cut 16 squares 2-1/2"

B - Cut 5 squares 4-1/2"

Cutting the 18" Finished Block

A - Cut 16 squares 3-1/2"

B - Cut 5 squares 6-1/2"

Thrifty by Dorry Emmer

Thrifty by Denniele Bohannon

Denniele used Connecting Threads Color Wheel Solids for her two versions of Yankee Notions.

See that color wheel here:

    https://www.connectingthreads.com/cfPromo/nv7/colorwheelsolids.cfm?intmedid=CWSLearnNV7 

This Month's Tangible Yankee Notion 

Penny Banks

The first cast-iron mechanical bank, manufactured

by Connecticut's Stevens Foundry in 1869.

New Englander Benjamin Franklin told us in 1758 that "A penny saved is a penny got.” And the place to keep them was in a penny bank.

A politician hiding your money in a Stevens bank

from the 1870s

This collectible cast iron bank may cost you more

than your last actual sewing machine.

Thrifty by Dorry Emmer

This isn't a bank, it's a cast iron toy sewing machine. Turn the crank the

woman sews. 

Later sewing machine bank

Becky Brown's 1-10

Two blocks to go

Dubious Slave Made Quilt

Quilt associated with the Long family, Gilmer, Texas,

Upshur County.

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_556169

We have few quilts with accurate stories that enslaved seamstresses worked on them. Unfortunately many of the quilts with that pre-1865 history cannot be reliably dated to the years before the Civil War ended and slaves were freed.

This feathered star quilt attributed to slaves at the Long Plantation in Upshur County Texas by the donor in 1979 is quite typical of Texas quilts in style---but typical of the years 1880-1930 rather than the 1840s-1865.

68" x 83"

Their photo is difficult to see but a little light adjustment shows it to be a red (probably Turkey red) and tan quilt of five 28" blocks (one cut in half and pieced into the bottom), set with triple sashing and a star in the cornerstones. The sashing is extended to make a border but in some places the small star was not used. The quilting is utilitarian, primarily parallel lines echoing the patchwork; the batting looks thick and the quilting stitches (5 or 6 stitches per inch) are probably as small as one could do through the warm batt.

Elizabeth West Smith (1831-1905) & M.S. Long (1822-1906)

from their Find-A-Grave sites

The donor was granddaughter of Matthew Smith Long Sr. She described him as an Irish immigrant who first settled in Tennessee where he acquired slaves which he brought to Texas in the 1840s to work on his 1,000 acre plantation in Little Cypress Creek in Upshur County. She did not mention her grandmother Elizabeth West Long who accompanied him. They must have arrived in the late 1840s. By 1850 Upshur County, about 80 miles west of Shreveport, Louisiana, had nearly 4,000 residents, nearly 700 of whom were slaves. Eastern Texas economy was based on corn, cotton and tobacco. Most of the enslaved workers were likely agricultural workers.

The 1850 census tells us something about the Longs. They married young; Elizabeth was 15 when her first child Nancy was born in Texas. Both parents are listed as being born in Tennessee with all their children being native Texans born after 1847. Were M West and ME West who lived on the adjacent farm relatives of Elizabeth?

Matthew Long's Civil War record as a Confederate soldier in Co. G, Terry's Regiment, Texas Cavalry also indicates he was born in Tennessee.
I did not find any slaves listed in the 1850 census but the 1860 slave schedule for Upshur County shows M.S. Long with 3 enslaved people.

The quilt came to the donor (Bonnie L. Carroll) from her mother who'd received it from her mother-in-law, presumably accompanied by the family story of it's slave-made history. She also wrote:

"The cotton filling in the quilt was raised on the Long plantation....When first made and even after I received it, [quilt] was green, red and white... the green has faded out [to tan]. You will find some machine stitching on the border around the quilt, my mother did this a number of years ago as it became worn from use..."

The green fading to tan is quite typical (unfortunately) of solid colors favored by Southern quiltmakers after 1880. Bonnie Carroll remembered that the tan was once green but did not say whether washing, light or just age deteriorated the color.

Another style characteristic that dates the Long quilt to after 1880 is triple strip sashing, a fashion throughout the South seen in variations below from east Texas quilts dating to the late 19th and early 20th century. Turkey red was a popular choice.

A white strip seems to have been added over

the half stars---perhaps the machine stitching mentioned 

in the caption.

The caption also wonders if the edges haven't been cut down, as explanation for the partial blocks along the edge but that is also a Southern quilt style characteristic often seen after 1880.

Five blocks cut to fit a rectangular format in fading green and red,

east Texas, after 1880. This was a deliberate setting format, often seen.

All in all the feathered star quilt appears to date to about 1900. It possibly could have been made by Elizabeth West Long who lived until 1905 or by one of her daughters or daughters-in-law. 

We certainly need a history of African-American quiltmaking but an accurate history. Serious attention to corroborating evidence in fabrics and style would help develop that history. 

A Quilt for James Speed in 1861

The Speed Museum in Louisville, Kentucky owns this

white work bedcover, which looks to be done in what we

might call candlewick embroidery.

Weavers (attributed to): Breckinridge, Lucy (American, b.Circa 1813)

Lucy Fry Speed Breckinridge (1811-1893)

The J.B. Speed Memorial Museum in its first incarnation in 

the late 1920s.

The museum is a memorial to James Breckinridge Speed, Lucy Breckinridge's nephew and foster son, created after his death by James's wife Hattie Bishop Speed.

Lt. James Breckinridge Speed (1844-1912)

Union Soldier in 27th Kentucky Volunteer Infantry

 Filson Historical Society Collection

Lucy's brother William Pope Speed and wife Mary Ellen Shallcroft Speed were living in Boonville, Missouri when James was born. His mother died soon after and James went back to Louisville to be raised by his Aunt Lucy and Uncle James Douglas Breckinridge who had no other children. 

Lucy and brother William were raised at Farmington, a Louisville plantation on over 500 acres,

centered on a Federal style house believed to have been designed by Thomas Jefferson. The large Speed family had many distinguished members, among them Joshua Speed who went to Illinois in the 1830s to open a store where he befriended lawyer Abraham Lincoln.

Farmington still stands, restored as a plantation museum.

Joshua Speed returned to Kentucky to manage Farmington after a few years in Illinois. Lincoln in one of his depressions, paid a restorative visit there in 1841 where he observed slavery at close hand and formed his opinions.

Uncle James (1781-1849) is buried with his first wife 

Mary Eliza Grayson. Lucy's thoughts on this are not recorded.

Uncle James died when his namesake was about 5 and Lucy raised him in her extended Speed family.

While in his teens James went to Chicago to clerk in a bank. The Filson Library owns letters from him including one to Aunt Lucy in September, 1861 a few weeks before Abraham Lincoln's election and the beginning of Southern secession. Worried about unrest in Paducah, Kentucky among other places, he feared the times were "likely to result in civil war." He also thanked her for "a box she has sent containing a quilt, books and food."

One could hope that quilt was in the collection of the

Speed Museum but the only textile connected to Aunt Lucy

is the whitework bedcover.

The Speeds were ambivalent about slavery, profiting from the labor of dozens of people who worked in their hemp fields and farm yards yet a few years after Lucy's father died in 1840 Lucy and her mother emancipated Rose, Sally and Sally's son Harrod. 

Photo of a painting by George P.A. Healy, 1864

Joshua Speed  (1814-1882) was courting Fanny Henning in 

Louisville during Lincoln's visit

Joshua was a supporter of the system, acting as a broker in Louisville, hiring, buying and selling people. He and Lincoln disagreed on the point and might have debated it on their return boat ride to Illinois. Writing to Joshua's half sister Mary, his "crony at Farmington," Lincoln mentioned a troubling experience on the boat watching twelve men who'd been sold away from their families, headed for terrible duty further South. They were "chained six and six together.... strung together precisely like so many fish upon a trot-line." Yet they "danced, sung, cracked jokes, and played various games with cards...[How is it that God] "renders the worst of human conditions tolerable...?"

Lucy's mother Lucy Gilmer Fry Speed (1788-1874)

born in Virginia after the Revolution lived a decade after the Civil War.

Despite their participation in the slave economy the Speeds were pro-Union. Lucy's nephew James Breckenridge enlisted at about 18 in Kentucky's Union Army. He eventually fought under Sherman in Atlanta and Knoxville.

Lucy & Joshua's brother, another James Speed (1812-1887) was U.S. Attorney General in Lincoln's Presidential administration and the Speed family was important in keeping border state Kentucky nominally in the Union during the Civil War.

The 1870 census shows Lucy and her mother Lucy still had

assets; both owned land. Their resident white servants  (Irish women

during the Civil War years) are now young women with German

names and German birthplaces (not Kansas as the interpretation of

the handwriting tells us.)

The Speed Museum has many quilts, most from Kentucky. This extraordinary feathered star by Sarah Jane Henderson Means 1826-1924) of Louisville is a favorite.

http://www.koar.org/search.do?view=label&page=7&keyword=quilt&db=object

Cassandra's Circle #9: Sally "Buck" Preston's Lost Love

Cassandra's Circle #9 Lost Love for Buck Preston by Becky Brown

Sarah Campbell Buchanan Preston Lowdnes (1842-1880)

Known as Buck

Buck Preston was the star among the young women in Mary Chesnut's circle in Richmond and Columbia. "All men worship Buck. How can they help it, she is so lovely," wrote Mary.

Buck must have received dozens of proposals during the war when she was in her early twenties. But she was coy and kept many suitors on a string. Mary saw the cause of all the broken hearts. "Buck was never so decided in her 'Nos' as [sister Mamie]." 

Buck,"who always reads what [Mary wrote in the diary], and makes comments of assent or dissent" wrote an amendment to this entry, claiming her "Nos" were "Not so loud, at least."

John Bell Hood (1831-1879)

Hood lost a leg and the use of one arm.

He spent recovery time in Mary's Richmond circle.

One of the men dangling on her string was Confederate General John Bell Hood from Kentucky. On seeing her in a pheasant feather hat the "blunt soldier [said] to the girl: 'You look mighty pretty in that hat...I surrendered at first sight'."

S.C. Preston

The romance between Buck Preston and Sam Hood is a diary theme. Mary kept a running commentary despite the fact that Buck read everything she wrote.

Mary was rather enamored of the unfortunate General herself:

"Hood with his sad Quixote face...tall, thin, and shy; has blue eyes and light hair; a tawny beard, and a vast amount of it, covering the lower part of his face, the whole appearance that of awkward strength....The fierce light of Hood's eyes I can never forget."

#9 Lost Love by Denniele Bohannon

Hood was terribly crippled by his injuries. “Buck can’t help it. She must flirt….She does not care for the man. It is sympathy with the wounded soldier. Helpless Hood.”

Mary records an incident when Buck gracefully assisted him in a crowd.

"The General was leaning against the wall, Buck standing guard by him...held out her arm to protect him from the rush. After they had all passed she handed him his crutches, and they, too, moved slowly away. [Varina] Davis said: 'Any woman in Richmond would have done the same joyfully, but few could do it so gracefully. Buck is made so conspicuous by her beauty, whatever she does can not fail to attract attention.' "

Mary kept a CDV portrait of Buck's father, friend John Smith Preston, in

her photo album. The pictures show Quinby's stage set in Charleston.

Lost Love by Pat Styring. She filled up the corners in her own fashion.

Confusing sympathy for love, Buck accepted a ring. Her family (particularly sister Mamie) opposed marriage to a backwoods Kentuckian and the couple parted. In retrospect Buck told Mary she'd wished he'd been more persistent.

A few weeks after the war ended:

 "Mrs. Huger says Buck has lost twenty pound[s]. since I last saw her & is a perfect wreck. Mrs P[reston] ought either to have broken her engagement or to have permitted the marriage. [Buck] rides with R. Lowndes."

Anna Marie Hennen Hood (1837-1879)

Buck and Hood married others after the war. Hood became a cotton broker in New Orleans where he wed Anna Marie Hennen a month after Buck's marriage in 1868. The Hoods had 11 children, including three sets of twins.

Composite picture of the Hood family in 1879.

Hood and his wife died in a yellow fever epidemic in 1879 leaving

ten orphans. P.T. Beauregard and other old friends used this photo to raise money

for their care.

Rawlins Lowndes (1838-1919)

Buck died the year after Hood in Charleston. She'd married a man of her own aristocratic class, planter Rawlins Lowndes in March, 1868. Rawly had been a wartime aide to her uncle General Wade Hampton.

The Caspar Shutt/Lowndes home

Buck died at 38 leaving three children. Lowndes remarried and raised her children in the family home at 51 East Bay Street in Charleston.

The Block

Everybody loved Buck so a heart is at the center of Block #9...

drawn from a friendship quilt top made in Cumberland County,

New Jersey

Offered in an online auction

Applique to an 18-1/2" square or cut it larger and trim later. 

The Pattern

One way to print these JPGS.

• Create a new empty JPG file that is 8-1/2" x 11" or a word file.
• Click on the image above.
• Right click on it and save it to your file.
• Print that file out 8-1/2" x 11". Note the inch square block for reference.
• Adjust the printed page size if necessary. 
• Make templates.
• Add seams when cutting fabric.

____________________________________________________________________________

For the star cut a square 17" and fold into quarters. Make a template of the pattern and

lay it on the folds. Add seams and cut.

The sprouting star is an unusual design but there are a few examples,

this one a block recorded by the New Jersey project and the Quilt Index.

Pat's corners with a triple fruit.

Minimalism in a quilt from about 1900

Pat Styring's Blocks 1-9.

Mine needs stems, 9" block

Dots always add a certain

Je ne sais quoi