Yankee Notions #5: New England

Yankee Notions #5 New England Block by

Dorry Emmer

The New England Block represents New England's industrial landscape with its clock towers.

 Middlesex Mills, Lowell, Massachusetts, painted by Fitz Hugh Lane, about 1840

The industrial city, Lowell,Massachusetts

New England didn't invent the factory town; old England gets the credit but New England's cities contrasted sharply with the antebellum Southern village and town.

The country town, Holly Springs, Mississippi

People told time by the sun in rural America.

The Yankee economy and New England's industrial cities ran on a schedule.

"Work Commences.

At Ten minutes after last morning bell..."

The New England Block by Becky Brown

Belfry at the Boott Mills in Lowell

The industrial town resonated to the factory bell.

The Block

The New England Block by Denniele Bohannon

12" version

BlockBase 1802b

The New England Block was given the name in a 1930 catalog from Needlecraft Supply. 

Just two pieces---a square and a half-square triangle. It had been a popular block for several

decades. Earlier published names included 4X Star and Churn Dasher.

Quilt from about 1910

12-Inch Block

A - Cut 17 squares 2-7/8"

B - Cut 8 squares 3-1/4". Cut each in half with a single diagonal cut. You need 16 triangles.

18-Inch Block

A - Cut 17 squares 4-1/8"

B - Cut 8 squares 4-1/2". Cut each in half with a single diagonal cut. You need 16 triangles.

The New England Block by Denniele Bohannon

18" version

This Month's Tangible Yankee Notion

Watches & Clocks

Dorry found clock fabric.

Clocks were a classic Yankee notion...

... miniaturized to pocket watches before the Civil War.

And then there were alarm clocks. 

Connecticut's Hubbell alarm clock works patented in 1865

The curse of the working class.

Blocks 1-5

Five 18" blocks set with a 3" sash.

Late to work?

New Hampshire, about 1910

Photo by Lewis Hine, Library of Congress

Read about the Lowell National Historical Park in a preview of Thomas Dublin's guidebook here:

The Story of an Industrial City: A Guide to Lowell National Historical Park:

https://books.google.com/books?id=4F8oEG_ZMfoC&source=gbs_navlinks_s

A Stolen Quilt in Arkansas

Block from a South Carolina album quilt made in the 1840s. 

Collection of the Charleston Museum

Newspaper accounts tell of a quilt captured during the Civil War in 1864 in Boone County, Arkansas. General Frederick Steele's Federal Armies marched through the state in 1863, taking control of the Northern area above Little Rock and skirmishing in the Southern half until Lincoln removed him from Arkansas command in the summer of 1864.

"During the late war, it will be remembered by many of our oldest citizens that Gen. Steele's army of Federal solders made a raid through this county, robbing and plundering the people on their route. In the year 1864 they visited the residence of Mr. Lewis Thomas...[and took] a quilt that was prized very highly by the family."

The quilt was "an album or friendship quilt...made in South Carolina."

Album quilt made for Eleanor Israel Joseph Solomons by friends

in South Carolina and Georgia, 1851-1854

Not many South Carolina antebellum albums have survived.We'd certainly like to see what the Thomas family quilt looked like.

Star is Valley Springs, Arkansas in Boone County in the Ozarks up by the Missouri line. 

Other, mostly larger towns were sites of bigger battles.

The event precipitating the newspaper articles: A woman named Amelia Campbell Chapline (1855-1921) from Boone County who had the album quilt in her possession published a notice in 1890 describing it. "I would like to dispose of [it]. I would like to correspond with some of the heirs of Lewis Thomas."

Lewis Thomas's grandson Logan remembered that the quilt had belonged to his Grandmother.

Henry Clay Caldwell (1832-1915)

He also remembered a Union Colonel with the Third Iowa Cavalry named Henry Clay Caldwell. An Iowan who'd been a Lincoln delegate at the 1860 nominating convention, Caldwell was nevertheless born in Virginia and felt enough sympathy with the Arkansans that he remained there as a Federal Judge appointed by Lincoln. H.C. Caldwell tried unsuccessfully to prevent the Union soldiers from looting the Thomas house.

The long-lost quilt was restored to the Thomas family.

Album Quilt from South Carolina from the Townsend/Pope families, 

1850-1857,  now in the Shelburne Museum, stolen in the war

The quilt looted in Arkansas may not have been as elaborate as

the South Carolina albums shown here but we can wonder.

Album quilt made for Newton Parker, South Carolina,

North Carolina project & the Quilt Index.

See another post on an Arkansas Ozarks quilt here:

https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2020/05/mariah-ethridge-riddells-civil-war.html

Antebellum Album---Divided Hearts

Barbara Goetz, Antebellum Album, 2019

Collecting pictures of the 2018 BOM, Antebellum Album.

The book Divided Hearts should be out in a few weeks.

Charlene Bongiorno Stephens

These from our Facebook group show several in the "official set."

Debby Grisante

With a few additions, like the leaf applique

Janet Nagy Hanley

Jeanne Arnieri

Mary Walker Colgin

And then there are the unofficial sets.

France Aubert

Hard to get the correct color but here's an accurate

shot of her fabric.

Michelle Marker Christiansen

Traditional look in the sash with the blocks on point and the applique edge blocks.

Dominique Renou

Pieced stars in the sash.

Martha Claassen

Arrows an idea from Westering Women

a few years ago.

The Facebook group:

Ask to join.

https://www.facebook.com/groups/799666626885682/

And see this blog post at C&T's blog:

https://www.ctpub.com/blog/divided-hearts-a-civil-war-friendship-quilt/

Mariah Ethridge Riddell's Civil War

Star quilt attributed to Mariah Ethridge Riddle (Reddell) [1829-1884]

88-1/2" x 88-1/2"

Historic Arkansas Museum

Mariah Etheridge was born in Lawrence County, Tennessee, down by the Alabama state line where she married James Anderson Reddell when she was in her teens in 1845. Her first three children were born there; her fourth named Tennessee was born in 1852 in Arkansas, indicating the Reddells went west between 1850 and 1852. .

Like many, Mariah moved with her extended family. Ethridges and Reddells settled in the Arkansas Ozarks in Newton County where the central town was Jasper. Their farm was on Brasel Creek, which flowed into the Buffalo River.

We don't have a great photo of Mariah's quilt, so cannot

determine the date from the fabrics. The caption dates it to Ca. 1860,

after Mariah's move from Tennessee.

https://www.historicarkansas.org/collections/8-pointed-star-quilt

Details like the red & green appliqued border support that date.

Did Mariah make this quilt in Arkansas or was it brought from

her Tennessee home?

Mariah is buried in Union Hill Cemetery in the town of Parthenon.

The name Union Hill indicates local sentiment.

When the Civil War broke out Arkansas suffered from divided loyalties. In isolated Ozark communities with roots in the deep South the sympathy was Confederate. The battles in this part of the west were mostly guerrilla-style attacks on Union supply chains with Jasper's Sheriff John Cecil a Confederate leader. Cecil's guerrillas harassed the Union Army enough that the Arkansas Cavalry burned the town in 1864 while failing to flush him out.

Colonel John E. Phelps, commander of the Second Arkansas

At the age of 40 James Reddell joined the Union Army enlisting in the Second Arkansas Cavalry in February, 1864, headed for Springfield, Missouri. At the time Mariah was nine months pregnant with her ninth child (Perhaps the promise of a $300 bounty for enlisting was his motivation.)

Private James A. Riddle of Company D,

2nd Arkansas Calvary, is buried in the National Cemetery

in Springfield, Missouri.

William Anderson Reddell was born on February 11; James caught a fever and died a little over a month later. The children grew with the help of a Union soldier's pension. 

Mariah in the 1870 census, keeping house for her 8 children at home. 

Son Calvin at 13 was a farm laborer.

Ten years later Mariah moved with her younger children to Valley Mills in Bosque County, Texas, near Waco. At some point in her widowhood Mariah married Nathan Pickens. According to family information on her Find-A-Grave site Pickens had an earlier legal wife. When Mariah discovered his bigamy, "she left him on the side of the road." (Literally or figuratively is not clear.)

She spent her later years with her children in Texas and Arkansas, dying in 1896 in her mid-sixties at her eldest daughter Mary Jane Brasel's home in Newton County. 

Hawk'sbill Crag a local landmark illustrates

the county geography.

Local historian Evelyn Flood has mapped the Riddells and Riddles in several sites:

https://sites.rootsweb.com/~rkinfolks/stories/waitingattheriver.html

Mariah's Find A Grave files:
https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/32612496/mariah-riddle