Yankee Notions #7: Liberty Star

Yankee Notions #7, Liberty Star by Becky Brown

America, the Land of Liberty, has a checkered history with the word. As Samuel Johnson (late-18th-century-London's version of Dorothy Parker) asked:

"How is it that we hear the loudest yelps for liberty among the drivers of negroes?"

Johnson was complaining about the entire 13 colonies during our Revolution. As the decades went by regional differences in the concept of "liberty" continued to be a paradox and regional differences about the word's meaning widened.

UPDATE: I added Dorry Emmer's blocks.

Harriet Beecher Stowe

"Liberty!---electric word! What is it?"

Uncle Tom's Cabin or Life Among the Lowly

Samuel Jennings, Liberty Displaying the Arts and Sciences, or 

The Genius of America Encouraging the Emancipation of the Blacks
 1792. Library Company of Philadelphia

David Hackett Fischer in his book Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas discusses the many concepts of these words, noting the sectional "conflict between irreconcilable visions of liberty and freedom. Both sides used the same words, but in different combinations with distinct meaning....Confederate leaders always insisted that they were fighting for liberty and freedom ...a condition of independence and autonomy...The Confederate idea of liberty was not for everyone. The master class had many liberties. Slaves had none."

Southerners had no problem using the words liberty and slave in the same sentence.

Alexander Stephens (1812-1883) of Georgia

Confederate Vice-President Alexander Stephens believed the sectional conflict was over federal Constitutional ideas of liberty:

"Those ideas, however, were fundamentally wrong. They rested upon the assumption of the equality of races. This was an error. It was a sandy foundation, and the government built upon it fell when the 'storm came and the wind blew.' "

Connecticut-born Harriet Beecher Stowe contributed mightily to the varying concepts with her 1851 novel Uncle Tom's Cabin. She said she had a “vocation to preach on paper;" Southerners saw her as a New England harridan.

"The readers of these volumes will find in them, one mass of gross misrepresentation and ridiculous blundering. The authoress is so ignorant of Southern life and slave institutions, that she does not know how very far she leaves behind her, the track of probability." Louisa Cheves McCord.

"A dream caused by the perusal of Mrs. H. Beecher Stowe's 

popular work Uncle Tom's Cabin" by Kentucky lithographer C.R. Milne, 1853

Library of Congress

Stowe is being pulled into a cave, the Underground Railway, 

by satanic demons holding her book.

"We can imagine that she writes a big, scrawling hand, with the letters all backwards, avoiding neatness with pains-taking precision -- her voice is probably harsh, her attitude imposing, and she will, or does, wear her own grey hair in the mother-of-a-nation style." 

According to Fischer Yankee Notions of Liberty included,  "community self-government, which could impose substantial restrictions on individual freedom." Many Southerners saw any restrictions as an unacceptable compromise.

Liberty Star by Denniele Bohannon

The Block

Crib quilt from the mid-20th-century.

BlockBase #3748

In 1932 quilt columnist Eveline Foland of the Kansas City Star suggested red, white and blue for Liberty Star.

12" Block

A - Cut 4 squares 4".
B - Cut 1 square 6-1/4". Cut into 4 triangles with 2 cuts.

C - Cut 24 strips (3 different shades) 1-3/8" wide for the stripes. Cut these at 45 degree angles with a base of 4-1/4".

18" Block

A - Cut 4 squares 5-3/ 4".
B - Cut 1 square 8-3/4". Cut into 4 triangles with 2 cuts.

C - Cut 24 strips (3 different shades) 1-3/4" wide for the stripes. Cut these at 45 degree angles with a base of 6".

OR

Use striped fabric---pieced or printed--- and cut this out like a regular diamond star with 8 parallelograms. Piece C would then be....

12"

Cut strips 3" wide and cut at 45 degree angles with a base of 4-1/4". 

18"

Or use these templates:

Cut strips 4-1/4" wide and cut at 45 degree angles with a base of 6".
QuiltFolk magazine will show you how to make the star of pieced strips...

which is what Becky did.

https://www.quiltfolk.com/wp-content/uploads/woocommerce_uploads/qf-pattern-005-November-2018.pdf?_ke=eyJrbF9lbWFpbCI6ICJqaWxsZXJuNTdAeWFob28uY29tIiwgImtsX2NvbXBhbnlfaWQiOiAiUUU0N0FqIn0%3D

Liberty Star by Denniele Bohannon, 12" version

Vintage Liberty Star

This Month's Tangible Yankee Notion:

Manufactured Pincushions

Homemade pincushion

Fashioning pincushions was a common needlework project but the Yankee peddler might carry

manufactured pincushions.

A little luxury...

Silver baubles that made lovely gifts

or practical tools.

Most of these metal pincushions date to the turn

of the 20th century but they're such fun to look at we'll admit the anachronism.

And fun to collect.

In 1855 The Liberator (a Massachusetts anti-slavery newspaper) wrote of the "treasonable motto---Liberty first and Union afterwords."

Detail of Persis Bradbury's 1864 wool table cover

pictured in Woodard & Greenstein's

Crib Quilts & Other Small Wonders.

See a post  on this piece here:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2016/01/persis-woodburys-applique-table-cover.html

And the corrections here:

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2016/02/persis-bradbury-corrected.html

Becky Brown's Blocks 1-7

These reflections on regional concepts of personal liberty versus the good of the community may help us understand the sectionalism in mask-wearing during a pandemic.

See a preview of David Hackett Fischer's Liberty and Freedom: A Visual History of America's Founding Ideas here:
https://books.google.com/books?id=uc8KP_QtW-sC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false

Read more about Louisa Cheves McCord, the harsh Southern voice advocating the slave system here:
https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2020/03/cassandras-circle-3-louisa-cheves.html

Liberty Star #7 Dorry Emmer

1864 Patriotic Union Sampler

Years ago I saw this tattered quilt in an online auction

1864 with a Union sentiment embroidered in red thread.

It was in terrible shape; the turkey red sashing had disintegrated so badly

that the blocks fell apart, which makes me wonder if it was quilted and bound

block-by-block, what we call a pot holder quilt.

Several of the tan fabrics were probably Prussian blue at one time,

but laundry detergent discharges the color and you wind up with a dun color.

It has much in common with patriotic samplers from New Jersey and New York in the 1860s....

such as this sampler made the same year. It's associated with

 Mary Nevius Potter, wife of Sering Potter owner of the mill at Pottersville, New Jersey. 

See her grave here:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/80028805/mary-e-potter

Threads of Memory: Underground Railroad Quilt Based on History

Nonie's Block 11

St. Charles Star for Louisa Alexander

Threads of Memory BOM

You may recall six years ago that one of the first BOMs we did on this Civil War Quilts Blog was Threads of Memory. 

Jean Stanclift stitched the original model

It was a real learning experience for me, digitizing star patterns I'd sketched with a pen and then in EQ, fitting them on 8-1/2" x 11" sheets of paper so readers could print them out and hanging PDF patterns on the posts. The PDFs on the posts are now gone---those clouds shift with time---but the stories are still up there in blog posts.  See the links at the bottom of the page.

Block #8 Jacksonville Star for

Emily Logan

By Jo Tokla

I have had the patterns for sale in two formats in my Etsy shop. The other day Lily told me there was a printing problem with a few pattern templates, so I figured out what was wrong (Layout program automatically shrunk the pattern pieces) and reformatted the blocks that had templates.

#5 Madison Star for Delia Webster by Jelibet

The beautiful blocks here are from readers back in 2014.

Block #1 Portsmouth Star for Ona Judge Staines

by Suzie Kidman

Once I looked at it again I decided to reduce the price.

The PDF to print yourself with Nonie's block is now $12 for 12 patterns.

https://www.etsy.com/listing/484994362

The black & white patterns through the mail are $15 (includes US shipping.)

https://www.etsy.com/listing/498491037/

Pat Styring and friends in the St. Augustine Piecers

followed along. She did her own border (of course!)

#3 New Garden Star for Catherine White Coffin

 by Denniele Bohannon

#8 Lancaster Star for Deborah Simmons Coates

By Betty

 #10 Britain's Star for Charlotte Henson

by Pattyepoo

#4 Canada Star for Lucie Blackburn

By CivilWarQuiltFan

#6 Salem Star for Charlotte Forten Grimke

By Rosemary Youngs

#2 Mercer County Star for Susan Lowe Wattles

By Suzie Kidman

#12 Rochester Star for Amy Post & Harriet Jacobs

by Becky Brown

#7 Oberlin Star for the Oberlin Rescuers by Jean Stanclift

In 2014 we had a Flickr Gallery that has almost 600 wonderful pictures. Dustin Cecil maintained it for us.

https://www.flickr.com/groups/threadsofmemory/

Dustin pieced the whole thing in one fabric, ticking.

Here are links to the history of the women and the "Liberty Line."

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/01/threads-of-memory-1-portsmouth-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/02/threads-of-memory-2-mercer-county-star.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/03/threads-of-memory-3-new-garden-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/04/threads-of-memory-4-canada-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/05/threads-of-memory-5-madison-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/06/threads-of-memory-6-salem-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/07/threads-of-memory-7-oberlin-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/08/threads-of-memory-8-jacksonville-star.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/09/threads-of-memory-9-lancaster-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/10/threads-of-memory-10-britains-star-for.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/11/threads-of-memory-11-st-charles-star.html

http://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2014/12/threads-of-memory-12-rochester-star-for.html

Becky Brown finished two phenomenal tops.

Hannah Reynolds's Civil War

Hannah Elizabeth Reynolds 1851

The cross-stitched name of Hannah E. Welch Reynolds (1822-1890) is on a block in an appliqued album quilt in the collection of the Alabama Department of Archives and History. In 1851 she was 29 years old, mother of five living children and probably pregnant with her eighth.

The floral blocks are done in a curious, organic style and look to be the design, if not the stitching, of one hand. Hannah's contribution to the quilt is hard to determine. Did she sew a block or stitch her name?

Perhaps this was a fundraiser and she sponsored a block. The story accompanying the quilt indicates it was made for a wedding at Hannah's home in 1851, so maybe her name on a block was a gesture of good will and best wishes.

The blocks and the names are quite large.

The quilt is named for Hannah's home, Mount Ida.

Ann. Wallace. Shelby. 1851

This may be Willie Ann Wallace Welch, born in 1843

Walker E. Reynolds (1799-1871) 

Hannah was the second wife of a rich man in Talladega, Alabama. Her husband, a cotton planter, politician and railroad investor, was in his early fifties when the quilt was made.

Mt. Ida or Rendalia plantation house, begun about 1840

Sylacauga, Talladega County. The porch was added in 1859.

Photographed in 1935 by Alex Bush, Library of Congress

Hannah's father, a Baptist preacher, brought the family and a group of Virginians to the former Creek Indian territory in 1832 soon after the tribe gave up their rights.

When the Civil War began Hannah's husband owned land worth $62,000 and personal property worth $370,000, including hundreds of slaves. They'd just built a four-room addition to the house, adding the Greek-revival style porch and decorating with new furniture chosen in a New York shopping trip.

Her husband was too old to fight, her only son too young so Hannah's life in the war years was relatively stable. Maude, the last of her ten children, was born in 1862. Confederate soldier John W. Headley traveled through the country in 1863 on the railroad with troops and horses riding in the cars.

"There were no marks of war in this section, and everything indicated a prosperous population of planters. We were passing elegant homes all along the road from Talladega."

They stopped at the Reynolds's house.

"We enjoyed every attention and comfort here and the family seemed to appreciate the acquaintance of volunteers from Kentucky....Mrs. Reynolds invited us to remain until after dinner and we accepted. During the forenoon we were delightfully entertained by her daughters, Misses Eppie, Pink, and Bessie, who were about twenty, sixteen and fourteen years of age...the first day of real pleasure...after our troublous wanderings."

Walker Reynolds's railroad carrying Confederate troops and supplies became a target of Union raids in summer, 1864. Talladega was occupied, the railroad depot burned, track destroyed and food and other supplies confiscated. More of the town was burned in a second raid as the war ended.

The quilt is bordered with a Turkey red stripe.

Talladega in 1875.

University of Alabama Libraries

The Reynoldses were undoubtedly affected by the Confederate loss but they managed to hold on to the plantation till Hannah died in 1890. The 1870 census indicates Walker's net worth was almost $53,000. He died the following year.

Great-niece Mary Welch Lee remembered visiting the women who lived at Mt. Ida after the war. 

"On the upper floor, the 'ladies rooms' were on the front with a solid wall separating them from the rear of the house, where the men stayed, and which of course has a separate stairway up from the backporch. Still another stair goes up in Aunt Hannah’s room to the room above where the girls stayed until they were considered 'young ladies'. Later it was occupied, in turn, by two widowed daughters who returned to the old home: Cousin Eppie McGraw and Cousin Maude McLure."

Hannah's obituary

Her house was struck by lightning in 1956 and burned to the ground, leaving

only the columns.

The quilt known as the Mt. Ida Wedding Quilt was shown in 2017

at the Montgomery Museum of Art.

Sarah Bliss Wright and friends have recently made their own version.

See Mary Welch's Lee's story and more of the 1935 photos by Alex Bush here:

https://www.alabamapioneers.com/mount-ida-talladega-alabama-home-used-in-birth-of-a-nation/

Hannah's grave site: https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/139261590/hannah-elizabeth-reynolds