Civil War Quilts

Wednesday, August 14, 2024

Washington Whirlwind #8: White House Steps

Washington Whirlwind #8: White House Steps by Elsie Ridgely

Living in the White House, the Executive Mansion, in the mid-19th century might be considered a luxury but for some residents it was a death sentence. The sanitation system before urban sewage infrastructure is now blamed for the deaths of three presidents (William Henry Harrison, Zachary Taylor and James K. Polk.)

The building's elevation was lower than its water supply (the blue star-a natural spring), which was contaminated by a higher field (the green star) in which Washington's servants tossed the contents of the city's chamber pots. It was a series of step downs with dangers no one understood at the time.

William Henry Harrison (1773 - 1841)

President Harrison died a month after his inauguration. For generations people believed it was his cavalier disregard of a head covering at that open-air ceremony that killed him in 1841---more likely the sanitation system.

White House Steps by Jeanne Arnieri

The presidents were noted but how many unnamed servants and visitors caught typhoid fever from the mansion's contaminated drinking water? The disease, fatal in over 30% percent of the cases during the Civil War, was characterized by fever, rashes, abdominal pain & diarrhea, It wasn't until 1880 that scientists realized typhoid fever was caused by a water-borne bacillus, Salmonella typhosa.

Work continued on the new Capitol dome during the war.

White House Steps by Denniele Bohannon

The Lincoln boys came down with typhoid fever in February, 1862, 11 months after they moved into the Mansion. The long-term polluted sanitary system was made more dangerous by Army camps a few blocks from the White House with their open sewers.

William Wallace Lincoln 1850-1862

Photo in early 1862 by the Brady Studios.

Both Willie and Tad were very ill. Bud and Holly Taft were unaffected, although Bud visited his best friend daily while he was sick.

"Bud" Horatio Nelson Taft Jr. (1847-1915)

Bud was a few years older than Willie.

White House Steps by Becky Brown

Rebecca Rossignol Holiday Pomroy (1817-1884)

Abraham Lincoln asked Dorothy Dix, who supervised Union nurses, to recommend a nurse to help out. Dix had kept an eye on Rebecca Pomroy, who'd been treating typhoid patients in the Union hospitals in Washington. She was an empathetic, calm and consoling woman with a strong Protestant faith who had suffered too many illnesses and deaths in her own family shortly before the war.

No nursing could save 11-year-old Willie Lincoln who died on February 20, 1862. Tad survived the disease but his brother's death was a terrible trauma, as it was for the Taft boys.

Lincoln & Willie in Springfield

Willie is recalled as Abraham Lincoln's favorite child, much like him in his level demeanor and precise intelligence. Bud Taft's father Horatio N. Taft thought Willie a wise and amiable boy. Julia Taft remembered him as the "most lovable boy I ever knew."

"I stood at the foot of the bed, my eyes full of tears, looking at the man in silent, awe-stricken wonder,” recalled Elizabeth Keckley, a formerly enslaved woman who became Mary Lincoln’s seamstress and confident during the Civil War.

“His grief unnerved him, and made him a weak, passive child. I did not dream that his rugged nature could be so moved."

Lincoln historian Michael Burlingame's chapter on Willie's death in

When Life Strikes the President

Lincoln told Rebecca that Willie's death was his hardest trial. He found comfort in talking to a woman who'd lost two children and her husband yet had found peace and strength in Protestant principles. Lincoln's religion did not offer him the same comfort but he found talking to Rebecca therapeutic.

Nurse Pomroy

Library of Congress

Rebecca Pomroy's enameled earrings

The Library of Congress has several objects that once

were Rebecca's:

https://www.loc.gov/search/?fa=subject:pomroy,+rebecca

Once Tad recovered and his parents adjusted in their own ways to their loss Rebecca went back to her hospital but periodically visited the White House when they needed her or she needed a rest.

In 1873 Mary Clemmer Ames wrote of the changing capitol city:

"The green pools that used to distill malaria beneath your windows are now all sucked into the great sewers, planted at last in the foundations of the city."

White House Steps by Jeanne Arnieri

White House Steps by Elsie Ridgely

The Block

White House Steps

Log Cabin variations were extremely popular after 1870 or so with

different shading patterns. This one using concentric light and dark logs was

published by the Ladies Art Company about 1890 as White House Steps.

Their pattern was a little off. It's redrawn here to have consistent-sized side logs.

Detail of a top from about 1900

Further Reading:

Read a preview of Michael Burlingame's chapter here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=0Nc-DgAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=willie+lincoln+death+president&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjKsp25nK_-AhWjlWoFHSbxAKMQ6AF6BAgGEAI#v=onepage&q&f=false

Today we might call this mid-20th-century quilt from an online auction Housetops.

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2023/02/rebecca-holiday-pomroys-civil-war.html

Wednesday, August 7, 2024

Harriet Beecher Stowe's Civil War

Harriet Beecher Stowe (1811-1896) about 1863

When the Civil War began Harriet Beecher Stowe was living rather well in Andover, Massachusetts. Royalties from her influential novel Uncle Tom's Cabin funded luxuries her minister husband's salary could not provide.

Calvin Ellis Stowe (1802-1886)

Harriet became Calvin's second wife in 1836.

They lived in this stone house that is now an Andover dormitory.

Calvin was teaching at Andover Academy and they had four living children with eldest boy Fred a student at Harvard studying medicine. After Lincoln's first call for troops Fred joined the 1st Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry.

Frederick William Stowe (1840-1871?)

About 1863

Charles Edward, their other remaining son (two had died) was about 11. Also at home were three daughters. Twins Eliza and Hatty in their mid-twenties never married and a younger Georgianna was in her late teens.

Collection of the Schlesinger Library

Hatty & Eliza born in 1836

Georgianna May Stowe (1843-1890)

Fred became addicted to alcohol in his teens and spent time in a "water-cure" sanitarium in the late 1850s. His alcoholism remained a problem in the army. After he transferred to the 1st Massachusetts Heavy Artillery Regiment he was sent to Fort Runyon near Washington, protecting the capitol from Confederate attack that never happened.

Fort Runyon near Washington's Long Bridge

from Harper's Weekly

After realizing how bored he was his mother decided to check on him to see if it was necessary get him transferred to a post where he had less idle time. Her second purpose for a trip to Washington City was political. After Lincoln published a draft of the Emancipation Proclamation in September, 1862 abolitionist Harriet worried he would not follow through. "I am going to Washington to see the heads of the departments myself," she wrote a friend---being Harriet Beecher Stowe she had little doubt she'd get in to see them as well as the President.

Harriet Beecher Stowe House Collection

Isabella Holmes Beecher Hooker (1822-1907) and son Edward about 1863

She was accompanied by sister Isabella Beecher Hooker in her early forties and eldest daughter Hatty about 26, three ladies traveling alone being a bit difficult even for strong-minded women led by "Her Highness," as Isabella called her famous sister. The women toured public buildings and hospitals, ate a celebratory Thanksgiving dinner at the barracks of former slaves who'd escaped to Washington and listened in the ladies' gallery of Congress on December 1st when Lincoln opened the session with a reading of the Proclamation to take effect in a month.

The following day they had their Presidential audience with the man Isabella thought rustic but sincere, followed by a meeting with Mary Todd Lincoln who received them with "better grace than I anticipated ---& was dressed in altogether better taste than usual according to report."

The President's wife in mourning for her son

Willie who'd died about 9 months before the Beecher's visit.

Many years later Isabella's son Charles Stowe and his son Lyman Beecher Stowe wrote about the family in a biography and described the now famous words by which Lincoln greeted the author of Uncle Tom's Cabin:

"So you're the little woman who wrote the book that made this great war!"

Charles---in his early teens at the time---remained at home during the visit. He and son Lyman were given to rather colorful anecdotes that had little to do with actual family history in their book.

Phil Cardamone's sculpture of the famous meeting

The story is untrue. Lincoln in his daily flurry of visitors seems not to have recognized the women. Isabella recalled that "Lincoln had no conception who Mrs. Stowe was---and will not until Mrs. Lincoln instructs him on the subject in her own peculiar manner."

Isabella did remember that as usual Lincoln was reminded of a funny story from his days out west.

Harriet's other important mission was a temporary success. She asked a friend to give Fred a non-combatant position on his staff in the Army of the Potomac---but non-combatant or not---months later Fred fought at Gettysburg where he was wounded in the head by shrapnel.

Letter about Fred's injury from J M Crowell 10 days after the event

from Charles's biography of his mother: Harriet Beecher Stowe

compiled from her letters and journals by her son Charles Edward Stowe

Fred's unhappy life seems to have come to an end five years after the war when he disappeared in San Francisco.

The Harriet Beecher Stowe Center in Hartford has this

crazy quilt dated 1887 in their collections, said to have been

made for Harriet's son Charles or sister-in-law Frances Beecher

(Mrs. James Beecher). Frances's husband shot himself in 1886.

Harriet in 1886

Families blessed with creativity & brilliance as the Beechers were are often cursed with mental illness. James and brother George were both suicides. A difficult family story.

See a preview of The Life Of Harriet Beecher Stowe by Harriet's son Charles Beecher & & grandson Lyman Beecher Stowe:

https://books.google.com/books?id=EfVJEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=harriet+beecher+stowe+books&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwiJ4LWokK6FAxVav4kEHciiAgA4MhDoAXoECAYQAg#v=onepage&q=harriet%20beecher%20stowe%20books&f=false

More about the "Little woman/big war" story:

https://quod.lib.umich.edu/j/jala/2629860.0030.104/--lincoln-stowe-and-the-little-womangreat-war-story-the-%20making?rgn=main;view=fulltext

Wednesday, July 31, 2024

Kentucky Classic #5: Rose Tree for Missouri Immigrants

Kentucky Classic #5: Rose Tree by Becky Collis

Decades ago I saw this quilt in Missouri, attributed to Zerelda McClary Oliver, probably born in Paint Lick, Kentucky in Garrard County. She died in Kansas but the quilt shows her Kentucky roots.

Zerelda E. McClary Oliver (1822-1907)

Her design is obviously associated with the Garrard County quilts:

Carnations, similar leaves and an abundance of Rose Trees around the edge.

Rose Trees of all kinds are important in the Kentucky Classic medallion.

But they are not a design unique to this regional pattern.

The Rose Tree or Missouri Rose, as Carrie Hall called it,

was popular all over the south before the Civil War.

Lucinda Chesnut's Rose Tree or Missouri Rose in Carrie Hall & Rose Kretsinger's

Romance of the Patchwork Quilt.

I found maker Lucinda Garrard Chesnut (1827- 1894) born in Clay County,

Kentucky, moved to Missouri in 1859 and buried in Platte City, Missouri,

near Kansas City. She was granddaughter to Governor James Garrard

for whom Garrard County is named. Her family remained Union loyalists.

This month's pattern can also tell us of Margaret Jane Arnold Allen (1827-1902), another transplanted Kentuckian. After Missouri was created as a slave state in 1821 many Kentuckians migrated west including Margaret, born in Garrard County.

We often forget that Missouri and Kentucky share a border.

Margaret came to Jackson County with husband Eastham Allen and two sons about 1857.

Their son's obituary

Hicks City is in the southeast corner of Jackson County

Margaret's story is typical of many Kentucky-born Missourians. The Lincoln administration worked hard to keep Kentucky loyal. The President wrote in 1861, "I think to lose Kentucky is nearly the same as to lose the whole game…Kentucky gone, we cannot hold Missouri...."

Although both Kentucky and Missouri remained in the Union, Missouri's Kentucky transplants were much more inclined than their Kentucky relatives to follow southern loyalties as Missouri Confederates and guerilla fighters.

The Missouri countryside was a nightmare of guerilla warfare.

The Allens did not appear to hold slaves (no record of the Allens in the 1860 Jackson County census schedule) but when the war broke out Eastham joined Sterling Price's Confederate Army. Sergeant Allen fought in the Battle of Lone Jack and spent much of the war in Arkansas.

Escaping war-ravaged Missouri Margaret and the children returned to Kentucky. She may have had to leave after Order #11 took effect in 1863 banishing Confederate sympathizers from Jackson County. After Eastham surrendered at Shreveport, Louisiana he traveled to Kentucky to take his family back to Missouri.

The Allens left few records and I could find nothing about Margaret making quilts but her journeys like Lucinda Chesnut's explain why I would stumble upon Zerelda Oliver's Garrard County quilt in Kansas City.