Block # 1 Wandering Lover by Becky Brown The first block in our 2018 series Antebellum Album features Indiana Fletcher whose family tells us much about cross border relationships North and South before the Civil War. Unknown class and teacher Throughout the year we'll explore women's academies and signature quilts in the 1840s and '50s. We'll look at school girls whose lives were interrupted by the American Civil War and examine album quilts. Each month I'll post a free pattern for a favorite signature block from those early friendship quilts. Indiana Fletcher 1828-1900 Indiana Fletcher was a woman whose ties to North and South were tightened during her school years. Born in 1828, Indiana's unusual name celebrated her Uncle Calvin's new home on the western frontier. Calvin and Elijah Fletcher were Vermonters who refused to stay put. Seeking opportunity far from his parents' New England farm, Indiana's father Elijah wound up as a Yankee school teacher near Lynchburg, Virginia. He married well-to-do student Maria Antoinette Crawford and in short time became a Southerner--- a slave holder at his Sweet Briar plantation. Indie and sister Betty benefited from their mother's family money and father's faith in education---"the best fortune we can give our children." Indiana traveled north to St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, New Jersey and the class of 1843. Indie attended school across the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania southwest of Burlington New Jersey, the star at the top. Sweet Briar is the lower star. The Episcopal school overlooking the Delaware River was five years old. St Mary's was later named Doane Academy after founder George Washington Doane, who believed girls' curricula should be the same as boys'. He and wife Eliza built Riverside, an Italianate mansion next to the school, with Eliza's money from her first husband. Eliza also used that inheritance to support the school in the early years while it became established as a women's academy with a national reputation. Doane Academy still provides an education for young men and women. The Doane's home, Riverside. St. Mary's influenced Indiana in many ways. Perhaps the most concrete was the makeover she and Betty planned for their Virginia family home, improving the brick farmhouse with a tower on either side, ala Riverside. Father Elijah wrote, "This is a project of my Daughters, and as I rarely deny to gratify any of their desires, have consented this." Remodeling also dictated travels to New York City to buy furniture and keep in touch with friends made in school. Sweet Briar in Virginia in the early 20th century. One can see the bones of a Southern plantation between the towers. Burlington, New Jersey was not only home to important 19th-century boarding schools but also to some of the earliest album quilts. We have no evidence that Indie Fletcher ever contributed to a quilt but as a fashionable young woman in Burlington she must have been aware of the new fad for patchwork albums. Our first signature block---just like Indie---has links to Indiana and New Jersey. The Block Block 1 by Mark Lauer We have four modelmakers this year and two of them are making two sets so you're going to get lots of ideas. Mark's doing one traditional red, yellow & green set. 1843 Signature quilt from Burlington, New Jersey Collection of Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CPQuilts/id/229 A nine-patch variation is not something we might pick for an album block but in the antebellum years that white center square was seen as the perfect spot for a name and sentiment. No applique in this block of the month! But you might get ideas. Those buds stitched in the corners are pretty cute. I've seen two albums dated 1842 and 1843 with the pictured pattern---both from New Jersey and both attributed to Quakers. The quilt directly above with sashing is the cover quilt on the New Jersey Quilts book. Variations were common for albums from the complex version above to a simpler version below. Online Auction. Quilt looks to be about 1880-1910. The pattern is BlockBase #1700 I've picked a pattern of medium complexity: #1700 in BlockBase. (#1702 is for the ambitious---54 small HST's per block.) Late 19th-century version of #1702 The oldest published name I've found is Wandering Lover, published in Hearth & Home magazine in 1895, an appropriate name for Southerner Indie and a certain New York minister, two people divided by Civil War. Mark's second set is done in the bright and black repros we call neon prints today---black novelty prints from about 1910. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 3 background squares 4-7/8” Cut each in half diagonally. You need six large triangles. B— Cut 9 dark and 3 light squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 18 dark and 6 light of the smaller triangles. C--- Cut 3 squares 4-1/2”. Block 1 by Pat Styring Pat is doing her distinctive collage-like interpretation: a little applique, a lot of fussy-cutting. The Civil War & After Indiana Fletcher Williams, perhaps in the 1880s. When Civil War broke out Indie was a rich single woman, a 33-year-old slave-holder living on the family plantation. Her personal war was less painful than that of many Virginians. Sweet Briar remained safe from fighting so many of her trials were just tribulations. The railroads no longer ran; food and goods were scarce. And she missed her Northern travels. Pass for travel in Virginia right after the War. Indie applied for a pass to cross into the Union from Virginia. In 1864 she asked Uncle Calvin to recommend her, hoping to escape the South where "fortunes are vanishing like the glories of the setting sun." Calvin Fletcher refused to vouch for her loyalty, fearing she'd try to get her hands on the Vermont family farm, but I would guess Indiana's motivation to cross the lines was more romance than greed. James Henry Williams Frustrated travel plans may have included a visit to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where J.H. Williams was an Episcopal minister. Once the war ended Williams visited Sweet Briar and married Indie soon after. Daughter Maria Georgiana (Daisy) was born in 1867. The Fletchers' fortune did not vanish with the Confederacy's setting sun and she and Williams continued to prosper throughout the century, dividing their time between New York and Virginia, while Daisy attended Manhattan schools. Daisy Williams (1867 -1884) Sadly, their only child inherited a debilitating disease and died at the age of 16. Her broken-hearted parents moved permanently to New York. In 1889 when J.H. Williams died his will requested Indiana use their fortune and Virginia land to establish a women's school in Daisy's memory. You may be familiar with Sweet Briar, a private women's liberal arts college on 3,000 acres near Lynchburg. Sweet Briar College in 1914, fourteen years after Indiana Fletcher Williams's death. Indie's mansion still stands Sweet Briar College was recently named a top ten small school in Forbes' Magazines survey. Denniele Bohannon is also doing two sets in high contrast brights. This is from her pink set. And this one with more triangles is from her blue set. BlockBase #1701. Sentiment for July Each month I'll show an inked flourish from a mid-century album. You might want to print it and trace it. Or try some free-hand grape vines with your signature. Information about the Fletcher/Williams family is abundant. I first read Indie's tale in a group biography of her father's family. Our Family Dreams is by Daniel Blake Smith. Album sold at Hindman Auctions about 15 years ago with a variation of this month's block on the top row next to the willow tree. If you'd prefer you can buy the patterns for Antebellum Album in my Etsy shop. I've packaged blocks 1-4, which you can buy as a PDF to print yourself for $5. Or I'll print it on my black & white printer and mail it to you for $9. You'll be getting patterns January through April ahead of everyone else so don't be telling anybody. Here are the links: https://www.etsy.com/listing/589746451/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4? https://www.etsy.com/listing/575941078/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4?

Block # 1 Wandering Lover by Becky Brown The first block in our 2018 series Antebellum Album features Indiana Fletcher whose family tells us much about cross border relationships North and South before the Civil War. Unknown class and teacher Throughout the year we'll explore women's academies and signature quilts in the 1840s and '50s. We'll look at school girls whose lives were interrupted by the American Civil War and examine album quilts. Each month I'll post a free pattern for a favorite signature block from those early friendship quilts. Indiana Fletcher 1828-1900 Indiana Fletcher was a woman whose ties to North and South were tightened during her school years. Born in 1828, Indiana's unusual name celebrated her Uncle Calvin's new home on the western frontier. Calvin and Elijah Fletcher were Vermonters who refused to stay put. Seeking opportunity far from his parents' New England farm, Indiana's father Elijah wound up as a Yankee school teacher near Lynchburg, Virginia. He married well-to-do student Maria Antoinette Crawford and in short time became a Southerner--- a slave holder at his Sweet Briar plantation. Indie and sister Betty benefited from their mother's family money and father's faith in education---"the best fortune we can give our children." Indiana traveled north to St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, New Jersey and the class of 1843. Indie attended school across the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania southwest of Burlington New Jersey, the star at the top. Sweet Briar is the lower star. The Episcopal school overlooking the Delaware River was five years old. St Mary's was later named Doane Academy after founder George Washington Doane, who believed girls' curricula should be the same as boys'. He and wife Eliza built Riverside, an Italianate mansion next to the school, with Eliza's money from her first husband. Eliza also used that inheritance to support the school in the early years while it became established as a women's academy with a national reputation. Doane Academy still provides an education for young men and women. The Doane's home, Riverside. St. Mary's influenced Indiana in many ways. Perhaps the most concrete was the makeover she and Betty planned for their Virginia family home, improving the brick farmhouse with a tower on either side, ala Riverside. Father Elijah wrote, "This is a project of my Daughters, and as I rarely deny to gratify any of their desires, have consented this." Remodeling also dictated travels to New York City to buy furniture and keep in touch with friends made in school. Sweet Briar in Virginia in the early 20th century. One can see the bones of a Southern plantation between the towers. Burlington, New Jersey was not only home to important 19th-century boarding schools but also to some of the earliest album quilts. We have no evidence that Indie Fletcher ever contributed to a quilt but as a fashionable young woman in Burlington she must have been aware of the new fad for patchwork albums. Our first signature block---just like Indie---has links to Indiana and New Jersey. The Block Block 1 by Mark Lauer We have four modelmakers this year and two of them are making two sets so you're going to get lots of ideas. Mark's doing one traditional red, yellow & green set. 1843 Signature quilt from Burlington, New Jersey Collection of Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CPQuilts/id/229 A nine-patch variation is not something we might pick for an album block but in the antebellum years that white center square was seen as the perfect spot for a name and sentiment. No applique in this block of the month! But you might get ideas. Those buds stitched in the corners are pretty cute. I've seen two albums dated 1842 and 1843 with the pictured pattern---both from New Jersey and both attributed to Quakers. The quilt directly above with sashing is the cover quilt on the New Jersey Quilts book. Variations were common for albums from the complex version above to a simpler version below. Online Auction. Quilt looks to be about 1880-1910. The pattern is BlockBase #1700 I've picked a pattern of medium complexity: #1700 in BlockBase. (#1702 is for the ambitious---54 small HST's per block.) Late 19th-century version of #1702 The oldest published name I've found is Wandering Lover, published in Hearth & Home magazine in 1895, an appropriate name for Southerner Indie and a certain New York minister, two people divided by Civil War. Mark's second set is done in the bright and black repros we call neon prints today---black novelty prints from about 1910. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 3 background squares 4-7/8” Cut each in half diagonally. You need six large triangles. B— Cut 9 dark and 3 light squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 18 dark and 6 light of the smaller triangles. C--- Cut 3 squares 4-1/2”. Block 1 by Pat Styring Pat is doing her distinctive collage-like interpretation: a little applique, a lot of fussy-cutting. The Civil War & After Indiana Fletcher Williams, perhaps in the 1880s. When Civil War broke out Indie was a rich single woman, a 33-year-old slave-holder living on the family plantation. Her personal war was less painful than that of many Virginians. Sweet Briar remained safe from fighting so many of her trials were just tribulations. The railroads no longer ran; food and goods were scarce. And she missed her Northern travels. Pass for travel in Virginia right after the War. Indie applied for a pass to cross into the Union from Virginia. In 1864 she asked Uncle Calvin to recommend her, hoping to escape the South where "fortunes are vanishing like the glories of the setting sun." Calvin Fletcher refused to vouch for her loyalty, fearing she'd try to get her hands on the Vermont family farm, but I would guess Indiana's motivation to cross the lines was more romance than greed. James Henry Williams Frustrated travel plans may have included a visit to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where J.H. Williams was an Episcopal minister. Once the war ended Williams visited Sweet Briar and married Indie soon after. Daughter Maria Georgiana (Daisy) was born in 1867. The Fletchers' fortune did not vanish with the Confederacy's setting sun and she and Williams continued to prosper throughout the century, dividing their time between New York and Virginia, while Daisy attended Manhattan schools. Daisy Williams (1867 -1884) Sadly, their only child inherited a debilitating disease and died at the age of 16. Her broken-hearted parents moved permanently to New York. In 1889 when J.H. Williams died his will requested Indiana use their fortune and Virginia land to establish a women's school in Daisy's memory. You may be familiar with Sweet Briar, a private women's liberal arts college on 3,000 acres near Lynchburg. Sweet Briar College in 1914, fourteen years after Indiana Fletcher Williams's death. Indie's mansion still stands Sweet Briar College was recently named a top ten small school in Forbes' Magazines survey. Denniele Bohannon is also doing two sets in high contrast brights. This is from her pink set. And this one with more triangles is from her blue set. BlockBase #1701. Sentiment for July Each month I'll show an inked flourish from a mid-century album. You might want to print it and trace it. Or try some free-hand grape vines with your signature. Information about the Fletcher/Williams family is abundant. I first read Indie's tale in a group biography of her father's family. Our Family Dreams is by Daniel Blake Smith. Album sold at Hindman Auctions about 15 years ago with a variation of this month's block on the top row next to the willow tree. If you'd prefer you can buy the patterns for Antebellum Album in my Etsy shop. I've packaged blocks 1-4, which you can buy as a PDF to print yourself for $5. Or I'll print it on my black & white printer and mail it to you for $9. You'll be getting patterns January through April ahead of everyone else so don't be telling anybody. Here are the links: https://www.etsy.com/listing/589746451/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4? https://www.etsy.com/listing/575941078/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4?

It's 2018 and I haven't told you enough about the new free Block of the Month here at Civil War Quilts. The twelve sampler blocks will all be pieced, drawn from designs popular for Antebellum Album quilts. Most of the samplers I've looked at mixed applique and pieced blocks, but we're focusing on piecing in 2018. I've selected 12 of the popular pieced designs seen in samplers and signature quilts from the 1840s & '50s. Some of the patterns I chose are in this album quilt from the Massachusetts project & the Quilt Index. (No Sunflowers! No applique!) The blocks will be easy to moderately difficult what with a few curved & Y seams. I'll post patterns on the last Wednesday of each month in 2018. You don't have to sign up, the patterns are free here. If you prefer you can buy a PDF download of four patterns three times during 2018 from my Etsy store. I'll mail you the paper patterns or you can print them yourself. I'll post the first set on Etsy on the last of this month. Readers are clamoring for fabric information. (Well, one of you.) Becky Brown's stack. See what the model makers have chosen at this post: https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2017/11/next-years-civil-war-block-of-month.html Yardage for the 12" Finished Sampler Blocks If you're planning to use scraps for your 12 sampler blocks I'd pick a color palette and maybe buy a yard of background or a theme fabric (perhaps adding that yard to one of the setting block fabrics below). Or just buy a bunch of repro prints. Here's a cornucopia of gorgeous Jo Morton prints I saw for sale the other day. If you want to use the same fabrics throughout the 12 sampler blocks: I'd pick 5--- Light, Light medium, Medium, Medium dark and Dark. Sort of shaded like the above. Really dark, really light and then three in between. Choose a background too and buy a yard of that, and then half yards of the 5 others. That gives you 3-1/2 yards for the sampler blocks. Should be plenty. You'll also need a half yard for binding the 60" quilt. The Official Set Turkey red and overdyed green 1840-1880. We have to have an official set that all the model makers can ignore. (They follow their own muses, which is fine with me.) I've chosen a double nine patch, a classic old American pattern. There will probably be more set suggestions throughout the year too so you might want to wait to decide on how to set the blocks. You can always refer to this page. I'll post a link in the left hand column during the year. YARDAGE & Cutting for the Alternate Block Setting For the squares A & B (light pink) 1 yard For the rectangles C & D (dark pink) 1-3/4 yards Alternate Nine-Patch Set 60" x 60 13 Alternate Blocks 12 Sampler Blocks I used EQ7 to figure out the yardage (EQ8 wasn't available yet) I imagine it works in similar fashion in either program. First I colored the blocks in distinctive fashion so I could read the key. Then I went to Print > Print Fabric Yardage I used the default settings And here's what it said: For the squares A & B (light pink) 7/8 yard For the rectangles C & D (dark pink) 1-1/2 yards I'd add a little more if you want to have some for the sampler blocks too = 1 yard and 1-3/4 yards. Cutting the Alternate Block A—Cut 8 squares 2-1/2” (104 in all for 13 blocks) B—Cut 1 square 4-1/2” (13 in all) C—Cut 4 rectangles 8-1/2” x 2-1/2” (52 in all) D—Cut 4 rectangles 4-1/2” x 2-1/2” (52 in all) The first pattern is set for Wednesday January 31, 2018 Read more about the theme here: https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2017/09/antebellum-album-1840-1860-free-civil.html Class of 1855, teachers in bonnets and students in lace collars. Oberlin College, Ohio

Antebellum Album #12: A Double Life by Becky Brown Our last block in the Antebellum Album series recalls Emily Wharton Sinkler. Philadelphia's Navy Asylum housed the Naval Academy In the antebellum period Philadelphia was the center for American education, not only in its elite French Schools for women but also for men's academies and colleges, among them the predecessor of the U.S. Naval Academy. Charles Sinkler of South Carolina attended classes there in 1841 training to be a Midshipman. Emily Wharton Sinkler (1823-1875) After his year in Philadelphia he forged a long-term Northern connection, marrying 19-year-old Emily Wharton daughter of a real estate lawyer. Philadelphia snob Sidney George Fisher was not fond of the women in Emily's family. Her mother and older sister "are at the head of the blue school of mawkish, sentimental, would be literary ladies lately got up here. They are more darkly, deeply blue than the rest." By blue he meant well-read and educated. We can imagine how a couple of attractive and well-bred young people, a naval officer and a Philadelphia belle (if a little blue), may have met and courted. St. Stephen's Church where Emily married still stands in Philadelphia. A Southern planter and a woman descended from Quaker Philadelphia's founders might face conflicts often seen in mixed marriages like the union between actress Fanny Kemble and slave-holder Pierce Butler. By the time of Emily's 1842 marriage the battling Butlers were the talk of Philadelphia. Butler and Kemble divorced in 1849 Surely someone must have pointed to the Butlers as a cautionary tale before Emily wed and sailed south to live in Orangeburg County on the Santee River. 1911 map with plantation areas in pink and the city of Charleston at the red arrow. Much of their neighborhood is now under Lakes Moultrie & Marion. Eutaw, 1939, from the Library of Congress, a Sinkler cotton plantation where Emily joined the family in 1842. These Lowcountry plantation homes were not mansions imagined in movie sets of Tara. Yet, Emily and Charles's marriage was a success, not only at the personal level but also because it affected so many family members in positive fashion. A prime reason for that success was shared social class. As Daniel Kilbride pointed out in his book An American Aristocracy: Southern Planters in Philadelphia, antebellum families like the Wharton and Sinklers valued membership in an American aristocracy as more important than any North/South cultural differences. Emily would have raised far more eyebrows had she married a middling Philadelphian. A second factor was Emily's personality. She was no prima donna but a sunny, energetic woman who grew to love her in-laws. A third important contributor was the young Sinklers decision to split their year between two cultures. Twice a year Emily traveled by ship between her two homes. Fall trips back to South Carolina during hurricane season caused much anxiety. The Sinklers were comfortable in their double life, spending October through March in South Carolina Lowcountry and spring and summer, the sickly season, in Philadelphia. Her parents' Pennsylvania home and later one of their own provided a refuge from Carolina's climate and a cosmopolitan cycle to their antebellum years. Center of a Carolina Lowcountry white work quilt attributed to Charlotte Evance Cordes (1767-1826) in the collection of the D.A.R. Museum http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=46-7A-4E Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, in 1856. L.J. Levy & Sons is on the corner at left. Chestnut Street was the place to promenade and Levy's the place to shop. Emily may have spent many months every year in a rural backwater but she did not lack for civilization's blessings. The Whartons sent Philadelphia newspapers, English magazines, novels---and fabric. She kept up with fashion through Godey's and Peterson's. Summer trips to Philadelphia included shopping on Chestnut Street. When at the the plantations she often asked her family to purchase fabric at Levy's. In 1848 she wrote sister Mary: "I enclosed a note asking you to see about some furniture chintz for me....I wish you would inquire the price in Philadelphia and let me know in your next letter. Don't forget this." Levy's interior could not have been as magnificent as this lithograph claims but it was the fashionable yard goods store. In 1852 Mary sent fabric swatches. "The patterns gave me great satisfaction," wrote Emily. At first I guessed she meant dress patterns but I realize she was talking about the print fabrics as patterns. Charles "was keen for getting four dresses of the sort but I thinking that, rather too much of one good thing, am contented with getting one. Will you therefore get me 10 yards of the blue and [sister-in-law] Anna 10 yards of the brown.....Please get me some patterns of whatever they have pretty at Levy's in the way of Spring and Summer best dresses...." The Block A Double Life by Mark Lauer The star inside another star (a good idea) is not that common in antique quilts. Here's one that looks to be about 1900 from a Quilters Newsletter cover. BlockBase #2167. The Ladies' Art Company called it Stars & Squares about 1890; Ruth Finley Rising Star in 1929. This album found in the Connecticut project has Turkey red blocks dated 1847 to 1855, set together with a gold print. The double star recalls Emily's two homes and two families. A Double Life by Pat Styring Cutting a 12" Finished Block A - Cut 5 squares 3-1/2". B - Cut 1 square 7-1/4". Cut into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 4 triangles. C - Cut 4 squares 3-7/8". Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 8 triangles. D - Cut 4 squares 2". E - Cut 1 square 4-1/4". Cut into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 4 triangles. F - Cut 1 square 2-3/8". Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 8 triangles. Sewing A Double Life by Denniele Bohannon Giant vintage double star medallion from Laura Fisher's inventory A Sentiment for December Here's a 3" wide version of Hannah Dubree's signature in a music book from a star block in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art: http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/321654.html?mulR=1330222659|9 During the War & After Sailing between homes in Philadelphia and Charleston came to an end after the battle of Fort Sumter in Charleston's bay in 1861. Emily and Charles remained in South Carolina throughout the war. With his conflicted loyalties Charles did not enlist but eldest son Wharton Sinkler (1845-1910) joined the South Carolina Cavalry when he was 17. 2nd South Carolina Cavalry in camp Confederate troops brought slaves to do chores like cooking and laundry. Wharton Sinkler was accompanied by Mingo Rivers (1829-1880). Both Wharton and Mingo survived the war. Wharton attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and remained a Philadelphian for the rest of his life. Mingo returned to South Carolina where he is buried in the plantations' burial grounds. Emily is there too in a cemetery now an island in Lake Marion, which diverted the Santee River and Eutaw Creek and flooded the Sinkler plantations in the 1940s. A Double Life by Mark Lauer Emily's descendants have documented her life well. Read her antebellum letters in the book Between North and South: The Letters of Emily Wharton Sinkler, 1842–1865. Edited by Anne Sinkler Whaley LeClercq. See a preview here: https://books.google.com/books?id=i1SeQq_M5vYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=emily+wharton+sinkler&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUps7Q5OvWAhWm14MKHQaxAU8Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=emily%20wharton%20sinkler&f=false And see more about her here: https://books.google.com/books?id=JKTqCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA20&dq=emily+wharton+sinkler&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUps7Q5OvWAhWm14MKHQaxAU8Q6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=emily%20wharton%20sinkler&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=RzUgnbfcH5sC&pg=PA50&dq=emily+wharton+sinkler&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUps7Q5OvWAhWm14MKHQaxAU8Q6AEIUDAH#v=onepage&q=emily%20wharton%20sinkler&f=false A Double Life by Denniele Bohannon We are finished! 12 blocks. Becky Brown's beautiful top.

Charlene's Blocks 1-5 Lots of stitchers keeping up with the monthly Antebellum Album blocks. You'd better catch up this week because #6 is up a week from today. Carrie Here are some sets.... Grace Jessica Judy Marie Helene Notice the toile or chintz scene in the center of each. Sunny

Block # 1 Wandering Lover by Becky Brown The first block in our 2018 series Antebellum Album features Indiana Fletcher whose family tells us much about cross border relationships North and South before the Civil War. Unknown class and teacher Throughout the year we'll explore women's academies and signature quilts in the 1840s and '50s. We'll look at school girls whose lives were interrupted by the American Civil War and examine album quilts. Each month I'll post a free pattern for a favorite signature block from those early friendship quilts. Indiana Fletcher 1828-1900 Indiana Fletcher was a woman whose ties to North and South were tightened during her school years. Born in 1828, Indiana's unusual name celebrated her Uncle Calvin's new home on the western frontier. Calvin and Elijah Fletcher were Vermonters who refused to stay put. Seeking opportunity far from his parents' New England farm, Indiana's father Elijah wound up as a Yankee school teacher near Lynchburg, Virginia. He married well-to-do student Maria Antoinette Crawford and in short time became a Southerner--- a slave holder at his Sweet Briar plantation. Indie and sister Betty benefited from their mother's family money and father's faith in education---"the best fortune we can give our children." Indiana traveled north to St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, New Jersey and the class of 1843. Indie attended school across the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania southwest of Burlington New Jersey, the star at the top. Sweet Briar is the lower star. The Episcopal school overlooking the Delaware River was five years old. St Mary's was later named Doane Academy after founder George Washington Doane, who believed girls' curricula should be the same as boys'. He and wife Eliza built Riverside, an Italianate mansion next to the school, with Eliza's money from her first husband. Eliza also used that inheritance to support the school in the early years while it became established as a women's academy with a national reputation. Doane Academy still provides an education for young men and women. The Doane's home, Riverside. St. Mary's influenced Indiana in many ways. Perhaps the most concrete was the makeover she and Betty planned for their Virginia family home, improving the brick farmhouse with a tower on either side, ala Riverside. Father Elijah wrote, "This is a project of my Daughters, and as I rarely deny to gratify any of their desires, have consented this." Remodeling also dictated travels to New York City to buy furniture and keep in touch with friends made in school. Sweet Briar in Virginia in the early 20th century. One can see the bones of a Southern plantation between the towers. Burlington, New Jersey was not only home to important 19th-century boarding schools but also to some of the earliest album quilts. We have no evidence that Indie Fletcher ever contributed to a quilt but as a fashionable young woman in Burlington she must have been aware of the new fad for patchwork albums. Our first signature block---just like Indie---has links to Indiana and New Jersey. The Block Block 1 by Mark Lauer We have four modelmakers this year and two of them are making two sets so you're going to get lots of ideas. Mark's doing one traditional red, yellow & green set. 1843 Signature quilt from Burlington, New Jersey Collection of Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CPQuilts/id/229 A nine-patch variation is not something we might pick for an album block but in the antebellum years that white center square was seen as the perfect spot for a name and sentiment. No applique in this block of the month! But you might get ideas. Those buds stitched in the corners are pretty cute. I've seen two albums dated 1842 and 1843 with the pictured pattern---both from New Jersey and both attributed to Quakers. The quilt directly above with sashing is the cover quilt on the New Jersey Quilts book. Variations were common for albums from the complex version above to a simpler version below. Online Auction. Quilt looks to be about 1880-1910. The pattern is BlockBase #1700 I've picked a pattern of medium complexity: #1700 in BlockBase. (#1702 is for the ambitious---54 small HST's per block.) Late 19th-century version of #1702 The oldest published name I've found is Wandering Lover, published in Hearth & Home magazine in 1895, an appropriate name for Southerner Indie and a certain New York minister, two people divided by Civil War. Mark's second set is done in the bright and black repros we call neon prints today---black novelty prints from about 1910. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 3 background squares 4-7/8” Cut each in half diagonally. You need six large triangles. B— Cut 9 dark and 3 light squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 18 dark and 6 light of the smaller triangles. C--- Cut 3 squares 4-1/2”. Block 1 by Pat Styring Pat is doing her distinctive collage-like interpretation: a little applique, a lot of fussy-cutting. The Civil War & After Indiana Fletcher Williams, perhaps in the 1880s. When Civil War broke out Indie was a rich single woman, a 33-year-old slave-holder living on the family plantation. Her personal war was less painful than that of many Virginians. Sweet Briar remained safe from fighting so many of her trials were just tribulations. The railroads no longer ran; food and goods were scarce. And she missed her Northern travels. Pass for travel in Virginia right after the War. Indie applied for a pass to cross into the Union from Virginia. In 1864 she asked Uncle Calvin to recommend her, hoping to escape the South where "fortunes are vanishing like the glories of the setting sun." Calvin Fletcher refused to vouch for her loyalty, fearing she'd try to get her hands on the Vermont family farm, but I would guess Indiana's motivation to cross the lines was more romance than greed. James Henry Williams Frustrated travel plans may have included a visit to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where J.H. Williams was an Episcopal minister. Once the war ended Williams visited Sweet Briar and married Indie soon after. Daughter Maria Georgiana (Daisy) was born in 1867. The Fletchers' fortune did not vanish with the Confederacy's setting sun and she and Williams continued to prosper throughout the century, dividing their time between New York and Virginia, while Daisy attended Manhattan schools. Daisy Williams (1867 -1884) Sadly, their only child inherited a debilitating disease and died at the age of 16. Her broken-hearted parents moved permanently to New York. In 1889 when J.H. Williams died his will requested Indiana use their fortune and Virginia land to establish a women's school in Daisy's memory. You may be familiar with Sweet Briar, a private women's liberal arts college on 3,000 acres near Lynchburg. Sweet Briar College in 1914, fourteen years after Indiana Fletcher Williams's death. Indie's mansion still stands Sweet Briar College was recently named a top ten small school in Forbes' Magazines survey. Denniele Bohannon is also doing two sets in high contrast brights. This is from her pink set. And this one with more triangles is from her blue set. BlockBase #1701. Sentiment for July Each month I'll show an inked flourish from a mid-century album. You might want to print it and trace it. Or try some free-hand grape vines with your signature. Information about the Fletcher/Williams family is abundant. I first read Indie's tale in a group biography of her father's family. Our Family Dreams is by Daniel Blake Smith. Album sold at Hindman Auctions about 15 years ago with a variation of this month's block on the top row next to the willow tree. If you'd prefer you can buy the patterns for Antebellum Album in my Etsy shop. I've packaged blocks 1-4, which you can buy as a PDF to print yourself for $5. Or I'll print it on my black & white printer and mail it to you for $9. You'll be getting patterns January through April ahead of everyone else so don't be telling anybody. Here are the links: https://www.etsy.com/listing/589746451/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4? https://www.etsy.com/listing/575941078/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4?

It's 2018 and I haven't told you enough about the new free Block of the Month here at Civil War Quilts. The twelve sampler blocks will all be pieced, drawn from designs popular for Antebellum Album qu

It's 2018 and I haven't told you enough about the new free Block of the Month here at Civil War Quilts. The twelve sampler blocks will all be pieced, drawn from designs popular for Antebellum Album quilts. Most of the samplers I've looked at mixed applique and pieced blocks, but we're focusing on piecing in 2018. I've selected 12 of the popular pieced designs seen in samplers and signature quilts from the 1840s & '50s. Some of the patterns I chose are in this album quilt from the Massachusetts project & the Quilt Index. (No Sunflowers! No applique!) The blocks will be easy to moderately difficult what with a few curved & Y seams. I'll post patterns on the last Wednesday of each month in 2018. You don't have to sign up, the patterns are free here. If you prefer you can buy a PDF download of four patterns three times during 2018 from my Etsy store. I'll mail you the paper patterns or you can print them yourself. I'll post the first set on Etsy on the last of this month. Readers are clamoring for fabric information. (Well, one of you.) Becky Brown's stack. See what the model makers have chosen at this post: https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2017/11/next-years-civil-war-block-of-month.html Yardage for the 12" Finished Sampler Blocks If you're planning to use scraps for your 12 sampler blocks I'd pick a color palette and maybe buy a yard of background or a theme fabric (perhaps adding that yard to one of the setting block fabrics below). Or just buy a bunch of repro prints. Here's a cornucopia of gorgeous Jo Morton prints I saw for sale the other day. If you want to use the same fabrics throughout the 12 sampler blocks: I'd pick 5--- Light, Light medium, Medium, Medium dark and Dark. Sort of shaded like the above. Really dark, really light and then three in between. Choose a background too and buy a yard of that, and then half yards of the 5 others. That gives you 3-1/2 yards for the sampler blocks. Should be plenty. You'll also need a half yard for binding the 60" quilt. The Official Set Turkey red and overdyed green 1840-1880. We have to have an official set that all the model makers can ignore. (They follow their own muses, which is fine with me.) I've chosen a double nine patch, a classic old American pattern. There will probably be more set suggestions throughout the year too so you might want to wait to decide on how to set the blocks. You can always refer to this page. I'll post a link in the left hand column during the year. YARDAGE & Cutting for the Alternate Block Setting For the squares A & B (light pink) 1 yard For the rectangles C & D (dark pink) 1-3/4 yards Alternate Nine-Patch Set 60" x 60 13 Alternate Blocks 12 Sampler Blocks I used EQ7 to figure out the yardage (EQ8 wasn't available yet) I imagine it works in similar fashion in either program. First I colored the blocks in distinctive fashion so I could read the key. Then I went to Print > Print Fabric Yardage I used the default settings And here's what it said: For the squares A & B (light pink) 7/8 yard For the rectangles C & D (dark pink) 1-1/2 yards I'd add a little more if you want to have some for the sampler blocks too = 1 yard and 1-3/4 yards. Cutting the Alternate Block A—Cut 8 squares 2-1/2” (104 in all for 13 blocks) B—Cut 1 square 4-1/2” (13 in all) C—Cut 4 rectangles 8-1/2” x 2-1/2” (52 in all) D—Cut 4 rectangles 4-1/2” x 2-1/2” (52 in all) The first pattern is set for Wednesday January 31, 2018 Read more about the theme here: https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2017/09/antebellum-album-1840-1860-free-civil.html Class of 1855, teachers in bonnets and students in lace collars. Oberlin College, Ohio

Antebellum Album 4: Quaker Pride by Mark Lauer Block from the Aimwell School Quilt, Philadelphia, 1847. Collection of the Historical Society of Moorestown, New Jersey. This month's block is found in a lovely Quaker quilt made for a 30-year-old Philadelphia teacher. "Presented by the Pupils of the Aimwell School to their Teacher, Sarah D. Powell, 1847." We saw the quilt at the AQSG meeting in New Jersey a few years ago. I recognize Karen Alexander, Ginny Gunn and me admiring the fabrics. The Aimwell School, on Cherry Street below 10th, photographed by Robert Newell, about 1870. Sarah Dutton Powell was born in Nether Providence, Pennsylvania, in 1817. Her own schooling was at the Quaker Westtown School in Chester County, where she graduated with the class of 1838. Embroidered sampler featuring the Westtown School founded in 1799, near Philadelphia. When Sarah was a student the female curriculum at Westtown still emphasized sewing. A short history of the sewing room there: "Sewing was generally taught in girls' schools over the country; it was a special recommendation to a teacher that she could make a handsome sampler—at times that was the main object in attending school....In 1815 we are told that 'two weeks out of six were passed by the little girls in the sewing-room, no matter what their proficiency in the art.' " The Committee of Instruction eliminated the sewing course in 1843 after Sarah's graduation. Quaker needlework traditions with their early 1840s emphasis on friendship quilts undoubtedly influenced the fad for signature quilts. As a major Quaker academy Westtown School attracted Southern students whose parents valued Quaker or Friends culture over any North/South prejudices. So we can imagine that schoolmates from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line signed album blocks. Westtown in 1840. The school claims to be the oldest co-educational school still operating in the U.S. Westtown takes great pride in its over 200 year history, but the Quaker girls' school where Sarah taught was three years older. Founded by Anne Parrish (1760-1800) to give poor girls a proper education, she charged no tuition. Named for an educational goal, the Aimwell School was supported by contributions until it closed in 1923. Sarah's quilt might have been made as a going away gift by her Aimwell students or as an engagement celebration. She married Isaac Leeds of Moorestown, New Jersey on March 28, 1849 at Philadelphia's Twelfth Street Meeting. Twelfth Street Meeting House Block 4 by Becky Brown The Block Our fourth album block has remained popular as a signature pattern since the 1840s. Emily Vandergrift Snyder's Philadelphia quilt recorded the death of her husband and three of her children. See the whole quilt in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art here: http://www.lacma.org/eduprograms/EvesforEds/AmericanStories.pdf As #2413a & 2413b in BlockBase it has several published names. Names include Grandmother's Pride so I've called this month's pattern Quaker Pride because of its popularity with Quaker album quiltmakers. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 2 squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 4 small triangles. B—Cut 2 squares 5-1/4”. Cut each into 4 triangles with 2 cuts. You need 8 large triangles. C—Cut 13 squares 3-3/8”. Two blocks by Denniele Bohannon The Civil War & After Like several other young women followed here Sarah Powell Leeds did not live to see much of the Civil War. She died at 44 in July 1861, leaving five children three to ten years old. We can guess that she and a sixth child died at a time when almost 60 of every 1,000 births resulted in the mother's death. The red vertical line is British data for 1860. In 1990 the U.S. maternal death rate was 8.2 per 100,000; In 2007: 12.7 per 100,000. When Sarah died the rate was 6,000 per 100,000. Statistics were no better in 1889 when this spirit photo of a motherly ghost was published. + Pat Styring A little applique, a little fussy cutting. Again Sarah's quilt probably survived because she did not. Her children may have treasured it as a relic: "Sacred to Memory" to use an old-fashioned term. Sentiment for April For the Quakers a dove of peace Mark's second block in traditional color See the Aimwell School Quilt files here at the Quilt Index: http://www.quiltindex.org/~quilti/fulldisplay.php?kid=4A-7F-2DB And Lynda & Mary show several details of the blocks at Quaker Quilt History: http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/2012/11/anne-parrish-and-aimwell-school.html http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/2013/12/literacy-numeracy-and-useful-work.html Quilt dated 1851 in an ad from antique dealer Susan Parrish. Three of the blocks are this month's pattern. Westtown Reunion in the 1880s

Here's a label for your Antebellum Album quilt. Print the JPG above at 5" x 5" onto printable fabric leaving you room for your own message. Here are some instructions for printing: https://support.electricquilt.com/articles/tips-for-printing-on-eq-printable-fabric/ We still have three blocks to go.

Block # 1 Wandering Lover by Becky Brown The first block in our 2018 series Antebellum Album features Indiana Fletcher whose family tells us much about cross border relationships North and South before the Civil War. Unknown class and teacher Throughout the year we'll explore women's academies and signature quilts in the 1840s and '50s. We'll look at school girls whose lives were interrupted by the American Civil War and examine album quilts. Each month I'll post a free pattern for a favorite signature block from those early friendship quilts. Indiana Fletcher 1828-1900 Indiana Fletcher was a woman whose ties to North and South were tightened during her school years. Born in 1828, Indiana's unusual name celebrated her Uncle Calvin's new home on the western frontier. Calvin and Elijah Fletcher were Vermonters who refused to stay put. Seeking opportunity far from his parents' New England farm, Indiana's father Elijah wound up as a Yankee school teacher near Lynchburg, Virginia. He married well-to-do student Maria Antoinette Crawford and in short time became a Southerner--- a slave holder at his Sweet Briar plantation. Indie and sister Betty benefited from their mother's family money and father's faith in education---"the best fortune we can give our children." Indiana traveled north to St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, New Jersey and the class of 1843. Indie attended school across the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania southwest of Burlington New Jersey, the star at the top. Sweet Briar is the lower star. The Episcopal school overlooking the Delaware River was five years old. St Mary's was later named Doane Academy after founder George Washington Doane, who believed girls' curricula should be the same as boys'. He and wife Eliza built Riverside, an Italianate mansion next to the school, with Eliza's money from her first husband. Eliza also used that inheritance to support the school in the early years while it became established as a women's academy with a national reputation. Doane Academy still provides an education for young men and women. The Doane's home, Riverside. St. Mary's influenced Indiana in many ways. Perhaps the most concrete was the makeover she and Betty planned for their Virginia family home, improving the brick farmhouse with a tower on either side, ala Riverside. Father Elijah wrote, "This is a project of my Daughters, and as I rarely deny to gratify any of their desires, have consented this." Remodeling also dictated travels to New York City to buy furniture and keep in touch with friends made in school. Sweet Briar in Virginia in the early 20th century. One can see the bones of a Southern plantation between the towers. Burlington, New Jersey was not only home to important 19th-century boarding schools but also to some of the earliest album quilts. We have no evidence that Indie Fletcher ever contributed to a quilt but as a fashionable young woman in Burlington she must have been aware of the new fad for patchwork albums. Our first signature block---just like Indie---has links to Indiana and New Jersey. The Block Block 1 by Mark Lauer We have four modelmakers this year and two of them are making two sets so you're going to get lots of ideas. Mark's doing one traditional red, yellow & green set. 1843 Signature quilt from Burlington, New Jersey Collection of Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CPQuilts/id/229 A nine-patch variation is not something we might pick for an album block but in the antebellum years that white center square was seen as the perfect spot for a name and sentiment. No applique in this block of the month! But you might get ideas. Those buds stitched in the corners are pretty cute. I've seen two albums dated 1842 and 1843 with the pictured pattern---both from New Jersey and both attributed to Quakers. The quilt directly above with sashing is the cover quilt on the New Jersey Quilts book. Variations were common for albums from the complex version above to a simpler version below. Online Auction. Quilt looks to be about 1880-1910. The pattern is BlockBase #1700 I've picked a pattern of medium complexity: #1700 in BlockBase. (#1702 is for the ambitious---54 small HST's per block.) Late 19th-century version of #1702 The oldest published name I've found is Wandering Lover, published in Hearth & Home magazine in 1895, an appropriate name for Southerner Indie and a certain New York minister, two people divided by Civil War. Mark's second set is done in the bright and black repros we call neon prints today---black novelty prints from about 1910. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 3 background squares 4-7/8” Cut each in half diagonally. You need six large triangles. B— Cut 9 dark and 3 light squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 18 dark and 6 light of the smaller triangles. C--- Cut 3 squares 4-1/2”. Block 1 by Pat Styring Pat is doing her distinctive collage-like interpretation: a little applique, a lot of fussy-cutting. The Civil War & After Indiana Fletcher Williams, perhaps in the 1880s. When Civil War broke out Indie was a rich single woman, a 33-year-old slave-holder living on the family plantation. Her personal war was less painful than that of many Virginians. Sweet Briar remained safe from fighting so many of her trials were just tribulations. The railroads no longer ran; food and goods were scarce. And she missed her Northern travels. Pass for travel in Virginia right after the War. Indie applied for a pass to cross into the Union from Virginia. In 1864 she asked Uncle Calvin to recommend her, hoping to escape the South where "fortunes are vanishing like the glories of the setting sun." Calvin Fletcher refused to vouch for her loyalty, fearing she'd try to get her hands on the Vermont family farm, but I would guess Indiana's motivation to cross the lines was more romance than greed. James Henry Williams Frustrated travel plans may have included a visit to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where J.H. Williams was an Episcopal minister. Once the war ended Williams visited Sweet Briar and married Indie soon after. Daughter Maria Georgiana (Daisy) was born in 1867. The Fletchers' fortune did not vanish with the Confederacy's setting sun and she and Williams continued to prosper throughout the century, dividing their time between New York and Virginia, while Daisy attended Manhattan schools. Daisy Williams (1867 -1884) Sadly, their only child inherited a debilitating disease and died at the age of 16. Her broken-hearted parents moved permanently to New York. In 1889 when J.H. Williams died his will requested Indiana use their fortune and Virginia land to establish a women's school in Daisy's memory. You may be familiar with Sweet Briar, a private women's liberal arts college on 3,000 acres near Lynchburg. Sweet Briar College in 1914, fourteen years after Indiana Fletcher Williams's death. Indie's mansion still stands Sweet Briar College was recently named a top ten small school in Forbes' Magazines survey. Denniele Bohannon is also doing two sets in high contrast brights. This is from her pink set. And this one with more triangles is from her blue set. BlockBase #1701. Sentiment for July Each month I'll show an inked flourish from a mid-century album. You might want to print it and trace it. Or try some free-hand grape vines with your signature. Information about the Fletcher/Williams family is abundant. I first read Indie's tale in a group biography of her father's family. Our Family Dreams is by Daniel Blake Smith. Album sold at Hindman Auctions about 15 years ago with a variation of this month's block on the top row next to the willow tree. If you'd prefer you can buy the patterns for Antebellum Album in my Etsy shop. I've packaged blocks 1-4, which you can buy as a PDF to print yourself for $5. Or I'll print it on my black & white printer and mail it to you for $9. You'll be getting patterns January through April ahead of everyone else so don't be telling anybody. Here are the links: https://www.etsy.com/listing/589746451/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4? https://www.etsy.com/listing/575941078/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4?

Block # 1 Wandering Lover by Becky Brown The first block in our 2018 series Antebellum Album features Indiana Fletcher whose family tells us much about cross border relationships North and South before the Civil War. Unknown class and teacher Throughout the year we'll explore women's academies and signature quilts in the 1840s and '50s. We'll look at school girls whose lives were interrupted by the American Civil War and examine album quilts. Each month I'll post a free pattern for a favorite signature block from those early friendship quilts. Indiana Fletcher 1828-1900 Indiana Fletcher was a woman whose ties to North and South were tightened during her school years. Born in 1828, Indiana's unusual name celebrated her Uncle Calvin's new home on the western frontier. Calvin and Elijah Fletcher were Vermonters who refused to stay put. Seeking opportunity far from his parents' New England farm, Indiana's father Elijah wound up as a Yankee school teacher near Lynchburg, Virginia. He married well-to-do student Maria Antoinette Crawford and in short time became a Southerner--- a slave holder at his Sweet Briar plantation. Indie and sister Betty benefited from their mother's family money and father's faith in education---"the best fortune we can give our children." Indiana traveled north to St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, New Jersey and the class of 1843. Indie attended school across the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania southwest of Burlington New Jersey, the star at the top. Sweet Briar is the lower star. The Episcopal school overlooking the Delaware River was five years old. St Mary's was later named Doane Academy after founder George Washington Doane, who believed girls' curricula should be the same as boys'. He and wife Eliza built Riverside, an Italianate mansion next to the school, with Eliza's money from her first husband. Eliza also used that inheritance to support the school in the early years while it became established as a women's academy with a national reputation. Doane Academy still provides an education for young men and women. The Doane's home, Riverside. St. Mary's influenced Indiana in many ways. Perhaps the most concrete was the makeover she and Betty planned for their Virginia family home, improving the brick farmhouse with a tower on either side, ala Riverside. Father Elijah wrote, "This is a project of my Daughters, and as I rarely deny to gratify any of their desires, have consented this." Remodeling also dictated travels to New York City to buy furniture and keep in touch with friends made in school. Sweet Briar in Virginia in the early 20th century. One can see the bones of a Southern plantation between the towers. Burlington, New Jersey was not only home to important 19th-century boarding schools but also to some of the earliest album quilts. We have no evidence that Indie Fletcher ever contributed to a quilt but as a fashionable young woman in Burlington she must have been aware of the new fad for patchwork albums. Our first signature block---just like Indie---has links to Indiana and New Jersey. The Block Block 1 by Mark Lauer We have four modelmakers this year and two of them are making two sets so you're going to get lots of ideas. Mark's doing one traditional red, yellow & green set. 1843 Signature quilt from Burlington, New Jersey Collection of Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CPQuilts/id/229 A nine-patch variation is not something we might pick for an album block but in the antebellum years that white center square was seen as the perfect spot for a name and sentiment. No applique in this block of the month! But you might get ideas. Those buds stitched in the corners are pretty cute. I've seen two albums dated 1842 and 1843 with the pictured pattern---both from New Jersey and both attributed to Quakers. The quilt directly above with sashing is the cover quilt on the New Jersey Quilts book. Variations were common for albums from the complex version above to a simpler version below. Online Auction. Quilt looks to be about 1880-1910. The pattern is BlockBase #1700 I've picked a pattern of medium complexity: #1700 in BlockBase. (#1702 is for the ambitious---54 small HST's per block.) Late 19th-century version of #1702 The oldest published name I've found is Wandering Lover, published in Hearth & Home magazine in 1895, an appropriate name for Southerner Indie and a certain New York minister, two people divided by Civil War. Mark's second set is done in the bright and black repros we call neon prints today---black novelty prints from about 1910. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 3 background squares 4-7/8” Cut each in half diagonally. You need six large triangles. B— Cut 9 dark and 3 light squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 18 dark and 6 light of the smaller triangles. C--- Cut 3 squares 4-1/2”. Block 1 by Pat Styring Pat is doing her distinctive collage-like interpretation: a little applique, a lot of fussy-cutting. The Civil War & After Indiana Fletcher Williams, perhaps in the 1880s. When Civil War broke out Indie was a rich single woman, a 33-year-old slave-holder living on the family plantation. Her personal war was less painful than that of many Virginians. Sweet Briar remained safe from fighting so many of her trials were just tribulations. The railroads no longer ran; food and goods were scarce. And she missed her Northern travels. Pass for travel in Virginia right after the War. Indie applied for a pass to cross into the Union from Virginia. In 1864 she asked Uncle Calvin to recommend her, hoping to escape the South where "fortunes are vanishing like the glories of the setting sun." Calvin Fletcher refused to vouch for her loyalty, fearing she'd try to get her hands on the Vermont family farm, but I would guess Indiana's motivation to cross the lines was more romance than greed. James Henry Williams Frustrated travel plans may have included a visit to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where J.H. Williams was an Episcopal minister. Once the war ended Williams visited Sweet Briar and married Indie soon after. Daughter Maria Georgiana (Daisy) was born in 1867. The Fletchers' fortune did not vanish with the Confederacy's setting sun and she and Williams continued to prosper throughout the century, dividing their time between New York and Virginia, while Daisy attended Manhattan schools. Daisy Williams (1867 -1884) Sadly, their only child inherited a debilitating disease and died at the age of 16. Her broken-hearted parents moved permanently to New York. In 1889 when J.H. Williams died his will requested Indiana use their fortune and Virginia land to establish a women's school in Daisy's memory. You may be familiar with Sweet Briar, a private women's liberal arts college on 3,000 acres near Lynchburg. Sweet Briar College in 1914, fourteen years after Indiana Fletcher Williams's death. Indie's mansion still stands Sweet Briar College was recently named a top ten small school in Forbes' Magazines survey. Denniele Bohannon is also doing two sets in high contrast brights. This is from her pink set. And this one with more triangles is from her blue set. BlockBase #1701. Sentiment for July Each month I'll show an inked flourish from a mid-century album. You might want to print it and trace it. Or try some free-hand grape vines with your signature. Information about the Fletcher/Williams family is abundant. I first read Indie's tale in a group biography of her father's family. Our Family Dreams is by Daniel Blake Smith. Album sold at Hindman Auctions about 15 years ago with a variation of this month's block on the top row next to the willow tree. If you'd prefer you can buy the patterns for Antebellum Album in my Etsy shop. I've packaged blocks 1-4, which you can buy as a PDF to print yourself for $5. Or I'll print it on my black & white printer and mail it to you for $9. You'll be getting patterns January through April ahead of everyone else so don't be telling anybody. Here are the links: https://www.etsy.com/listing/589746451/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4? https://www.etsy.com/listing/575941078/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4?

Block # 1 Wandering Lover by Becky Brown The first block in our 2018 series Antebellum Album features Indiana Fletcher whose family tells us much about cross border relationships North and South before the Civil War. Unknown class and teacher Throughout the year we'll explore women's academies and signature quilts in the 1840s and '50s. We'll look at school girls whose lives were interrupted by the American Civil War and examine album quilts. Each month I'll post a free pattern for a favorite signature block from those early friendship quilts. Indiana Fletcher 1828-1900 Indiana Fletcher was a woman whose ties to North and South were tightened during her school years. Born in 1828, Indiana's unusual name celebrated her Uncle Calvin's new home on the western frontier. Calvin and Elijah Fletcher were Vermonters who refused to stay put. Seeking opportunity far from his parents' New England farm, Indiana's father Elijah wound up as a Yankee school teacher near Lynchburg, Virginia. He married well-to-do student Maria Antoinette Crawford and in short time became a Southerner--- a slave holder at his Sweet Briar plantation. Indie and sister Betty benefited from their mother's family money and father's faith in education---"the best fortune we can give our children." Indiana traveled north to St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, New Jersey and the class of 1843. Indie attended school across the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania southwest of Burlington New Jersey, the star at the top. Sweet Briar is the lower star. The Episcopal school overlooking the Delaware River was five years old. St Mary's was later named Doane Academy after founder George Washington Doane, who believed girls' curricula should be the same as boys'. He and wife Eliza built Riverside, an Italianate mansion next to the school, with Eliza's money from her first husband. Eliza also used that inheritance to support the school in the early years while it became established as a women's academy with a national reputation. Doane Academy still provides an education for young men and women. The Doane's home, Riverside. St. Mary's influenced Indiana in many ways. Perhaps the most concrete was the makeover she and Betty planned for their Virginia family home, improving the brick farmhouse with a tower on either side, ala Riverside. Father Elijah wrote, "This is a project of my Daughters, and as I rarely deny to gratify any of their desires, have consented this." Remodeling also dictated travels to New York City to buy furniture and keep in touch with friends made in school. Sweet Briar in Virginia in the early 20th century. One can see the bones of a Southern plantation between the towers. Burlington, New Jersey was not only home to important 19th-century boarding schools but also to some of the earliest album quilts. We have no evidence that Indie Fletcher ever contributed to a quilt but as a fashionable young woman in Burlington she must have been aware of the new fad for patchwork albums. Our first signature block---just like Indie---has links to Indiana and New Jersey. The Block Block 1 by Mark Lauer We have four modelmakers this year and two of them are making two sets so you're going to get lots of ideas. Mark's doing one traditional red, yellow & green set. 1843 Signature quilt from Burlington, New Jersey Collection of Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CPQuilts/id/229 A nine-patch variation is not something we might pick for an album block but in the antebellum years that white center square was seen as the perfect spot for a name and sentiment. No applique in this block of the month! But you might get ideas. Those buds stitched in the corners are pretty cute. I've seen two albums dated 1842 and 1843 with the pictured pattern---both from New Jersey and both attributed to Quakers. The quilt directly above with sashing is the cover quilt on the New Jersey Quilts book. Variations were common for albums from the complex version above to a simpler version below. Online Auction. Quilt looks to be about 1880-1910. The pattern is BlockBase #1700 I've picked a pattern of medium complexity: #1700 in BlockBase. (#1702 is for the ambitious---54 small HST's per block.) Late 19th-century version of #1702 The oldest published name I've found is Wandering Lover, published in Hearth & Home magazine in 1895, an appropriate name for Southerner Indie and a certain New York minister, two people divided by Civil War. Mark's second set is done in the bright and black repros we call neon prints today---black novelty prints from about 1910. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 3 background squares 4-7/8” Cut each in half diagonally. You need six large triangles. B— Cut 9 dark and 3 light squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 18 dark and 6 light of the smaller triangles. C--- Cut 3 squares 4-1/2”. Block 1 by Pat Styring Pat is doing her distinctive collage-like interpretation: a little applique, a lot of fussy-cutting. The Civil War & After Indiana Fletcher Williams, perhaps in the 1880s. When Civil War broke out Indie was a rich single woman, a 33-year-old slave-holder living on the family plantation. Her personal war was less painful than that of many Virginians. Sweet Briar remained safe from fighting so many of her trials were just tribulations. The railroads no longer ran; food and goods were scarce. And she missed her Northern travels. Pass for travel in Virginia right after the War. Indie applied for a pass to cross into the Union from Virginia. In 1864 she asked Uncle Calvin to recommend her, hoping to escape the South where "fortunes are vanishing like the glories of the setting sun." Calvin Fletcher refused to vouch for her loyalty, fearing she'd try to get her hands on the Vermont family farm, but I would guess Indiana's motivation to cross the lines was more romance than greed. James Henry Williams Frustrated travel plans may have included a visit to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where J.H. Williams was an Episcopal minister. Once the war ended Williams visited Sweet Briar and married Indie soon after. Daughter Maria Georgiana (Daisy) was born in 1867. The Fletchers' fortune did not vanish with the Confederacy's setting sun and she and Williams continued to prosper throughout the century, dividing their time between New York and Virginia, while Daisy attended Manhattan schools. Daisy Williams (1867 -1884) Sadly, their only child inherited a debilitating disease and died at the age of 16. Her broken-hearted parents moved permanently to New York. In 1889 when J.H. Williams died his will requested Indiana use their fortune and Virginia land to establish a women's school in Daisy's memory. You may be familiar with Sweet Briar, a private women's liberal arts college on 3,000 acres near Lynchburg. Sweet Briar College in 1914, fourteen years after Indiana Fletcher Williams's death. Indie's mansion still stands Sweet Briar College was recently named a top ten small school in Forbes' Magazines survey. Denniele Bohannon is also doing two sets in high contrast brights. This is from her pink set. And this one with more triangles is from her blue set. BlockBase #1701. Sentiment for July Each month I'll show an inked flourish from a mid-century album. You might want to print it and trace it. Or try some free-hand grape vines with your signature. Information about the Fletcher/Williams family is abundant. I first read Indie's tale in a group biography of her father's family. Our Family Dreams is by Daniel Blake Smith. Album sold at Hindman Auctions about 15 years ago with a variation of this month's block on the top row next to the willow tree. If you'd prefer you can buy the patterns for Antebellum Album in my Etsy shop. I've packaged blocks 1-4, which you can buy as a PDF to print yourself for $5. Or I'll print it on my black & white printer and mail it to you for $9. You'll be getting patterns January through April ahead of everyone else so don't be telling anybody. Here are the links: https://www.etsy.com/listing/589746451/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4? https://www.etsy.com/listing/575941078/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4?

Antebellum Album 1840-1860 We tend to picture all 19th-century Americans facing off across the Mason-Dixon line in a deeply divided North and South. But before the Civil War the border line was not so sharply defined. Yankees and Southrons shared many connections. Families moved from one culture to another, vacationed to escape the heat or the cold, sent children to far-away boarding schools and sought economic opportunities in different markets as teachers, merchants or entrepreneurs. Inevitably immigrants married new neighbors, producing offspring who could boast of cousins from Maine to Saint Augustine. Album quilts were tangible links between Northerners and Southerners who maintained bonds in patchwork blocks inked with names and sentimental inscriptions. Mary Ellen Barnes, New York, 1845 The 2018 Block of the Month here at Civil War Quilts will look at North/South connections primarily through shared schooling. Each month we'll piece an album block popular with quilters in the antebellum (before the War) years as we read stories of schoolgirls who forged and broke links. Wincy Wadsworth, Cheraw S.C., 1851 Inscriptions from the same quilt in the collection of the North Carolina Museum of History. We'll follow that generation of women through the Civil War that changed their lives for better or worse. I'll post patterns on the last Wednesday of each month in 2018. You don't have to sign up, the patterns are free here. If you prefer you can buy a PDF download of four patterns three times during 2018 from my Etsy store. I'll mail you the paper patterns or you can print them yourself. I'll keep you posted as to how to do that during the year. I have signed up four model makers: Becky Brown promises her usual focus on reproduction prints; Denniele Bohannon is going to do a contemporary color take; Mark Lauer and Pat Styring will add new perspectives to remaking history. Mark's doing a red, green & yellow palette. You can start thinking about fabric and colors. Towards the end of 2017 I'll let you know more about what we model makers are planning.

Antebellum Album 1840-1860 We tend to picture all 19th-century Americans facing off across the Mason-Dixon line in a deeply divided North and South. But before the Civil War the border line was not so sharply defined. Yankees and Southrons shared many connections. Families moved from one culture to another, vacationed to escape the heat or the cold, sent children to far-away boarding schools and sought economic opportunities in different markets as teachers, merchants or entrepreneurs. Inevitably immigrants married new neighbors, producing offspring who could boast of cousins from Maine to Saint Augustine. Album quilts were tangible links between Northerners and Southerners who maintained bonds in patchwork blocks inked with names and sentimental inscriptions. Mary Ellen Barnes, New York, 1845 The 2018 Block of the Month here at Civil War Quilts will look at North/South connections primarily through shared schooling. Each month we'll piece an album block popular with quilters in the antebellum (before the War) years as we read stories of schoolgirls who forged and broke links. Wincy Wadsworth, Cheraw S.C., 1851 Inscriptions from the same quilt in the collection of the North Carolina Museum of History. We'll follow that generation of women through the Civil War that changed their lives for better or worse. I'll post patterns on the last Wednesday of each month in 2018. You don't have to sign up, the patterns are free here. If you prefer you can buy a PDF download of four patterns three times during 2018 from my Etsy store. I'll mail you the paper patterns or you can print them yourself. I'll keep you posted as to how to do that during the year. I have signed up four model makers: Becky Brown promises her usual focus on reproduction prints; Denniele Bohannon is going to do a contemporary color take; Mark Lauer and Pat Styring will add new perspectives to remaking history. Mark's doing a red, green & yellow palette. You can start thinking about fabric and colors. Towards the end of 2017 I'll let you know more about what we model makers are planning.

Nearly 150 years after emancipation, we still delight in hearing tales of a slave's escape. This lively block stitched of only one triangular pattern piece captures the cleverness the adventure required. In her 1935 book The Romance of the Patchwork Quilt, Carrie Hall gave the name "Catch Me If You Can" to an old design with many other names including "Winding Blades", "Devil's Puzzle" and "Flyfoot." Escape was often an impulse move. When opportunity knocked, a slave might slip through the door. Eliza Potter told the story of a young woman, a slave in Kentucky, who accompanied her mistress across the river to Cincinnati in the free state of Ohio: "She was sent out one morning to make purchases and never returned, but found a happy home, I trust, on English soil." Although we enjoy imagining good's triumph over evil, successful escapes were far too few. Most ended in failure for the simple reason stated by slaveholder William Dunbar in 1780: "Ketty came home this morning of herself, finding it uncomfortable lodging in the woods." Ketty must have weighed her options during the night and decided that hunger, cold and no real escape plan were worse than the expected whipping. Don't make the mistake of thinking this first week's block was a code or form of communication on the Underground Railroad. The block was given the name in 1935 and Carrie Hall did not mention slavery or the Civil War at all in her description. We are using a traditional block and a fanciful name to commemorate the Underground Railroad and escape from slavery. These symbolic patterns will have a label each week, as will reproduction patterns that actually existed during the Civil War. Stitching the Block 8" Finished Block Rotary Cutting Cut squares 2-7/8": 6 light, 6 medium and 4 dark Cut each on the diagonal to make 12 light, 12 medium and 12 dark triangles [oops! that's 8 dark triangles] Piece the triangles into squares, following the shading in the block photo This story is taken from my 2006 book Facts and Fabrications: Unraveling the History of Quilts and Slavery. See page 68 for a 15" pattern. Click here for more information about the book: http://www.ctpub.com/productdetails.cfm?PC=1049 You can buy it as a bound book or a digital book. Read Eliza Potter's 1859 memoir of her life as a free black woman before the Civil War at Google Books. A Hairdresser's Experience in High Life Click here: http://books.google.com/books?id=ksYEAAAAYAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=eliza+potter+hairdresser&source=bl&ots=-_yxJAyFuU&sig=FDg_CaF_X6FX0JuAWSgW-XhauiA&hl=en&ei=b7P_TLDFIIT7lwffwfihCA&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CCcQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

Antebellum Album #3 Friendship Star by Mark Lauer in traditional prints Album quilt top dated 1844 through 1858 in the collection of the North Carolina Museum of History (H.2000.96.2). Six signers in this top included their homes: three from South Carolina and three from New York. "The gift is small as you plainly may see And given as a token of friendship from me Mary Ellen Barnes New York March 15th 1845" What did these people who lived so far away from each other in the 1840s and 1850s have in common? Wincy P Wadsworth, Cheraw, S.C. 1851 Wincy is indeed her name. She's listed as 29 years old in the 1850 SC census. Wondering about those antebellum connections inspired this series. Constance Fenimore Woolson's school experience may offer us some clues. Constance Fenimore Woolson (1840-1894) graduated from Madame Chegary's in 1858, about the time of this portrait. She traveled from Cleveland, Ohio to New York City to board at the fashionable school known as Madame Chegaray's. Constance was an ambitious girl, a talented writer, eager to learn the mathematics, writing composition and science offered at home by the Cleveland Female Seminary, run by a graduate of Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke. Her parents, however, believed she needed finishing rather than more education. Madame Chégaray's Boarding and Day School for Young Ladies emphasized conversational French, manners, dancing, music, drawing and classical literature, what were called "ornamentals." A late-19th century woman described the program: "Other schools might have public examinations, and aim at higher education, but Mme. Chegaray knew nothing of such innovations. She tried simply to make her pupils gracefully feminine, and she accomplished much good in a mannerless generation." An unflattering portrait of Madame Héloise Chegary (1792-1889) at 95 in the New York Sun. Pupils called her Tante (Aunt) The school's mistress Héloise (Eloise) Désabaye Chégaray supported her family by teaching. Before the French Revolution the Désabayes lived in Paris "in great style" supported by their investments in the French colony of Santo Domingo (Haiti) where her mother's family had lived for over a century. Santo Domingo's slave rebellion overturned the ruling class and by 1797 colonial income vanished. Heloise's penniless family emigrated to New Jersey's Royalist French community. Mark's other set of blocks. He's doing two. Too young to actually teach, Heloise found work at Miss Sophia Hay's Academy in New Brunswick, New Jersey and then at two French academies in New York City. In 1814 when she was 22 she opened her own school near Washington Square. In 1827 she married Frenchman Fulgence Chégaray, listed as a merchant on Houston Street in 1834. In the 1820s he invested in a New York/South American Steamboat Association navigating the Amazon, a financial fiasco that dragged through the courts beyond his death in 1872. Unable to rely on his income, she maintained the school after marriage. The Academy moved several times over the years. When Constance attended it seems to have been at #11 East 28th Street. "For more than half a century, Madame Chégaray trained and instructed the daughters of New Yorkers of the better class...celebrated for amiability and beauty, high breeding and graceful manners," lauded her obituary. In the late 1850s, Constance found herself to be one of only three Northern girls among the dozens of boarders in New York. The many Southern belles defined themselves as "The Daughters of Carolina." Constance did not define herself as a Daughter of Ohio yet she felt quite out of place. An illustration from Woolson's Anne illustrates the classic conflict---a "mannerless generation." Constance might have been happier at Mount Holyoke School (see last month's post) and in the long run Tante Chegaray might have wished her there. Rejecting Tante's view of women as ornamental wives, Constance earned a living as a famous novelist. Her best selling Anne (1880) told of Anne's unhappy schooldays at school with a barely fictionalized Tante Moreau. Everyone in New York recognized the elderly "artificial and French" school mistress. In the 1840s the school's neighborhood was Union Square New Yorker Marian Campbell Gouverneur (1821-1914), a generation older than Constance, found her 1830s schoolmates more congenial. "About a hundred pupils, a large number of whom were from the Southern States. How well I remember the extreme loyalty of the Southern girls to their native soil! I can close my eyes and read the opening sentence of a composition written by one of my comrades, Elodie Toutant [of Louisiana], a sister of General Pierre G. T. Beauregard of the Confederate Army—'The South, the South, the beautiful South, the garden spot of the United States.' This chivalric devotion to the soil whence they sprang apparently was literally breathed into my Southern school companions from the very beginning of their lives....although I was born, reared and educated in a Northern State, I had a tender feeling for the South, which still lingers with me, for most of the friendships I formed at Madame Chegaray's were with Southern girls." The Block Block 3 by Becky Brown Fussy cutting phenomenon A version of this month's star from about 1875-1900. The Ladies' Art Company may have been the first to publish it as "Album Block" about 1900 but their drawing was rather awkward. Ladies' Art Company #352, early 20th century With a central octagon rather than a circle it's BlockBase #3588. The Kansas City Star inspired a small revival with their 1933 "Friendship Quilt" pattern. In the block's mid-19th-century heyday several variations added challenges Small centers and an octagonal block in a quilt dated 1843-1845 Burlington, New Jersey New Jersey Project & the Quilt Index On point. Quilt from the Arizona Project & the Quilt Index And below with curves Quilt dated 1845 from the collection of the New Jersey State Museum Hannah Hoyt (1805-1871) was founder and principal of New Jersey's New Brunswick Female Institute. Students made this gift for her. Signature Quilt dated 1884-1889 from the Rhode Island Project & the Quilt Index. We are piecing the design with the octagon in the center. Cutting a 12" Finished Block A - Cut 4 squares 4" x 4". B - Cut 1 square 6-1/4". Cut into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 4 triangles. C & D - Use the templates to cut 8 of C and 1 of piece D. To Print: Create a word file or a new empty JPG file that is 8-1/2" x 11". Click on the image above. Right click on it and save it to your file. Print that file out 8-1/2" x 11". Adjust the printed page size if necessary so the line indicated is the right size. Becky cautions: Be sure your pattern prints out correctly and that 3-1/2" sewing line is right. Mine printed out a smidge smaller so I used my proportion wheel to size it up to 3-1/2" and adjusted my printer to 107% to print my pattern. Here's a link to a post on printers: http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2016/06/adjusting-quilt-pattern-and-printing.html Block 3 by Pat Styring Pat's using fabric with words to evoke the handwriting in an album Do note that Wincy, Temperance and Mary Ellen who stitched the NY/SC album took a short cut of sorts. They seem to have appliqued a white circle in the center of a pieced star for inking. Temperance's below looks reverse appliqued. "Temperance B. Hamilton April 16th /49 Bennettsville" (Probably South Carolina although there is a Bennetsville, NY) This quilt from North and South is so well documented it's worth looking at the museum's photos. Do a search for the New York/South Carolina quilt at the North Carolina Museum site, which is a bit hard to navigate. You can just search for Quilt but the best way I've been able to find it is by using the accession number in the Keyword slot: H.2000.96.2. You could also search for Wincy. The photos of each inscription are lovely. http://collections.ncdcr.gov/RediscoveryProficioPublicSearch/GlobalSearch.aspx The Civil War & After Constance, perhaps about 1880 Constance returned to Cleveland to accept a proposal from dashing Zephaniah Swift Spalding (1837-1927) who enlisted when the Civil War began and rose to a Lieutenant-Colonel in the Twenty-seventh Ohio Infantry. Zeph Spalding after the War. While her fiance was fighting she was active in the local soldiers' aid societies, assisting in the Great Northern Ohio Sanitary Fair in 1864. Their romance did not survive the war years. They realized they'd changed. He sailed for Hawaii, first as a secret government agent and then as an entrepreneur in the sugar industry, marrying the boss's daughter in 1871. Constance also left Cleveland. She led a well-documented life as a best-selling novelist, remaining single and becoming close friends with Henry James. She wrote about the South after the war and maintained ties with her academy classmates. Sentiment for March An octagon or a circle? Ink a bird with a banner and no one will notice your stitching. Constance's tale is a fascinating American biography. Read the book by Anne Boyd Rioux: Constance Fenimore Woolson: Portrait of a Lady Novelist. And you can see Marian Campbell Gouverneur's 1911 memoir on line. As I Remember: Recollections of American Society During the Nineteenth Century. https://books.google.com/books?id=4wklAAAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Marian+Campbell+Gouverneur+1911&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiMhsXN_InWAhUm3IMKHSQiBMwQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=Marian%20Campbell%20Gouverneur%201911&f=false I wonder if Miss Woolson and Mrs. Gouverneur were acquainted and if so---Did they had absolutely anything to say to each other? Potholder quilt (blocks individually quilted and bound) from the Maine State Museum Note the star in bright red print. Denniele Bohannon's blue & white and pink & black blocks. Dramatic!

Antebellum Album 1840-1860 We tend to picture all 19th-century Americans facing off across the Mason-Dixon line in a deeply divided North and South. But before the Civil War the border line was not so sharply defined. Yankees and Southrons shared many connections. Families moved from one culture to another, vacationed to escape the heat or the cold, sent children to far-away boarding schools and sought economic opportunities in different markets as teachers, merchants or entrepreneurs. Inevitably immigrants married new neighbors, producing offspring who could boast of cousins from Maine to Saint Augustine. Album quilts were tangible links between Northerners and Southerners who maintained bonds in patchwork blocks inked with names and sentimental inscriptions. Mary Ellen Barnes, New York, 1845 The 2018 Block of the Month here at Civil War Quilts will look at North/South connections primarily through shared schooling. Each month we'll piece an album block popular with quilters in the antebellum (before the War) years as we read stories of schoolgirls who forged and broke links. Wincy Wadsworth, Cheraw S.C., 1851 Inscriptions from the same quilt in the collection of the North Carolina Museum of History. We'll follow that generation of women through the Civil War that changed their lives for better or worse. I'll post patterns on the last Wednesday of each month in 2018. You don't have to sign up, the patterns are free here. If you prefer you can buy a PDF download of four patterns three times during 2018 from my Etsy store. I'll mail you the paper patterns or you can print them yourself. I'll keep you posted as to how to do that during the year. I have signed up four model makers: Becky Brown promises her usual focus on reproduction prints; Denniele Bohannon is going to do a contemporary color take; Mark Lauer and Pat Styring will add new perspectives to remaking history. Mark's doing a red, green & yellow palette. You can start thinking about fabric and colors. Towards the end of 2017 I'll let you know more about what we model makers are planning.

Becky in VA: Please add your finished tops and quilts, to this discussion topic so we can see them all together. Even though the blocks are coming to an end (sniffle, sniffle) we will still have lots to share in the coming weeks/months.

Antebellum Album Block #9 Lexington Belle by Mark Lauer In the 1830's when Kentucky was considered the American West, Lexington considered itself the Athens of the West. Two French immigrants ran a school in that frontier outpost, an elegant touch in a small American city. Lexington just before the Civil War Waldemare and Charlotte Leclerc Mentelle were supporters of the King, royalists who escaped revolutionary Paris in 1792. Their skills: manners, dancing and the French language. About 1805 Mme. Mentelle began taking student boarders on their farm outside Lexington on land donated to the refugees by Mary Todd Russell Wickcliffe, a wealthy Lexingtonian. Among the boarders was Mary Russell Wickcliffe's great niece Mary Ann Todd, daughter of Kentucky State Representative and business man Robert Smith Todd. The younger Mary's mother had died after the birth of her seventh child when Mary Ann was six. Two years later Robert remarried. Mary's first school was the Shelby Female Academy housed in this building near Gratz Park, known today as the Ridgely House. One solution to conflict between stepmother and Mary was to board the 8-year-old at a nearby school. Mary Ann spent weekends at home, weekdays at the Shelby Female Academy. Portrait of Mrs. Moore's class of young students in a Kentucky silk quilt from Bourbon & Harrison Counties, 1893. Collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. #1987.80 After graduation Mary Ann moved on to Mentelle’s for Young Ladies out on the Richmond Pike. The Mentelles' Rose Hill farm was across the road from Ashland, the home of Kentucky's well-known politician "Henry of the West." The view from Mantelles' school: Ashland with Senator Henry Clay and dog in the front yard. The Mantelles daughter Marie married Clay's son Thomas in 1837. "My early home was truly at a boarding school," wrote Mary to friend Elizabeth Keckley in later life. Teacher and young students in the 1840s Madame provided that home for Mary between 1831 and 1836 and gave her an excellent grounding in French, literature and dancing. Mary became a fluent French speaker who read French books for entertainment throughout her life and spent several years of her widowhood in France. Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882), nicknamed "The Republican Queen," considered herself on a par with Queen Victoria and French Empress Eugenie. From Madame she also absorbed aristocratic pretensions that did her no good in her future life as First Lady Mary Lincoln. Members of Lexington's upper class were kind to the Mentelles, supporting their farming and schooling enterprises. When Madame died in 1860 her obituary praised, "Her lofty character, her pure life and great intellect in this community, where she has been loved, honored and venerated for half a century." But Madame left letters to her parents in France revealing the feelings were not mutual. "Lexington has no amiable virtues---its citizens have terrible manners..." When she was 20 Mary Todd moved north to Springfield, Illinois with her sisters far away from their stepmother. There she met lawyer Abraham Lincoln. The Block Album block in a quilt documented in the Massachusetts project. Variations on the block we tend to call Flying Geese were popular with mid-19th-century quilters for albums and repeat block quilts. This month's pattern, BlockBase #2902 is one of the oldest published versions. Names: An Effective Square (rather a dull name) about 1910 Baltimore Belle about the same time And Flying Geese in 1929 The name Lexington Belle can recall the Civil War's "Republican Queen." Lexington Belle by Becky Brown Cutting a 12" Block A - Cut 4 squares 2-7/8". B - Cut 1 square 8-3/8" Cut into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 4 large triangles. C - Cut 4 squares for the geese 3-1/4". Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 8 triangles. D - Cut 6 squares 3-5/8". Cut each into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 24 small triangles. -- E - Cut 1 square 3-7/8". Sewing Lexington Belle by Denniele Bohannon I try to include a regional album variation that relates to the monthly story's location. What kind of album quilt might Mary Todd have made? Strangely enough I have not been able to find one antebellum album quilt from the entire state of Kentucky. See a post on the curious lack of Kentucky pre-war signature quilts here: https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/11/kentucky-album-quilts-curious-absence.html 1930s visual interpretation of 1830's travel time from New York to the greater United States. One could get to NY in 6 days by ship from Charleston but it took 2 weeks to travel from Kentucky. Why no album quilts in the midst of the 1840s and '50s fad? Traveling between Kentucky and coastal cities was not so easy as travel between Philadelphia and Charleston. One could not take an Atlantic coast steamship to Kentucky. Kentuckians on their way to Boston combined Ohio River travel, stage coaches and short line railroads. Kentucky was rather isolated, one reason few Kentuckians are found in the rolls of schools in Philadelphia, Burlington or Hartford. Did this relative isolation result in Kentucky missing the album quilt fad? But Ohio was just across the Ohio River and we can find many album quilts from that state. Perhaps it was just a matter of taste. Album dated 1847 and 1848, with blocks signed Fairmount & Miamisburg, Ohio, & Hardy County, Virginia from the West Virginia project & the Quilt Index. http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=50-8A-472 What kind of quilt might Mary Todd have made---if she indeed made quilts? Block inscribed John Lewis (1784-1858) principal of the Georgetown Female Academy in Kentucky My guess: a silk hexagon or some kind of English paper pieced mosaic design. Some of the most interesting mosaic quilts were made in Kentucky. See a post about Mary Todd Lincoln and quilts here: https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/02/mary-lincoln-quilts.html A Sentiment for August A cherub with a banner from a star block in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Andrew Grauel was a coffee roaster by profession.) http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/321675.html?mulR=470577359|169 To see an inspiring selection of inking go to the Philadelphia Museum of Art's search page and search for Quilt Block. Lexington Belle by Denniele Bohannon During the War & After Lexington Belle by Pat Styring Mary Todd Lincoln in the 1850s Mary Ann Todd married Abraham Lincoln in 1842 when she was 22. She, of course, is easy to track through the Civil War, when she was First Lady. Privilege did not keep her from misery. She suffered incredible losses with all of her four boys but one dying before she did and of course, witnessing the horrific assassination of her husband in 1865. During the War her Kentucky relatives chose the Confederacy and two half-brothers were killed in battle as was a brother-in-law. 1871 Photo with a ghostly Abraham Lincoln superimposed She was so unstable that her remaining son Robert had her institutionalized at one point---a sad end to the story of a small girl banished to a boarding school. Lexington Belle by Mark Lauer Read more about Mary Ann Todd's younger years in Jean Harvey Baker's Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography. And more about the pattern here: https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2018/10/odd-fellows-march.html

It's 2018 and I haven't told you enough about the new free Block of the Month here at Civil War Quilts. The twelve sampler blocks will all be pieced, drawn from designs popular for Antebellum Album quilts. Most of the samplers I've looked at mixed applique and pieced blocks, but we're focusing on piecing in 2018. I've selected 12 of the popular pieced designs seen in samplers and signature quilts from the 1840s & '50s. Some of the patterns I chose are in this album quilt from the Massachusetts project & the Quilt Index. (No Sunflowers! No applique!) The blocks will be easy to moderately difficult what with a few curved & Y seams. I'll post patterns on the last Wednesday of each month in 2018. You don't have to sign up, the patterns are free here. If you prefer you can buy a PDF download of four patterns three times during 2018 from my Etsy store. I'll mail you the paper patterns or you can print them yourself. I'll post the first set on Etsy on the last of this month. Readers are clamoring for fabric information. (Well, one of you.) Becky Brown's stack. See what the model makers have chosen at this post: https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2017/11/next-years-civil-war-block-of-month.html Yardage for the 12" Finished Sampler Blocks If you're planning to use scraps for your 12 sampler blocks I'd pick a color palette and maybe buy a yard of background or a theme fabric (perhaps adding that yard to one of the setting block fabrics below). Or just buy a bunch of repro prints. Here's a cornucopia of gorgeous Jo Morton prints I saw for sale the other day. If you want to use the same fabrics throughout the 12 sampler blocks: I'd pick 5--- Light, Light medium, Medium, Medium dark and Dark. Sort of shaded like the above. Really dark, really light and then three in between. Choose a background too and buy a yard of that, and then half yards of the 5 others. That gives you 3-1/2 yards for the sampler blocks. Should be plenty. You'll also need a half yard for binding the 60" quilt. The Official Set Turkey red and overdyed green 1840-1880. We have to have an official set that all the model makers can ignore. (They follow their own muses, which is fine with me.) I've chosen a double nine patch, a classic old American pattern. There will probably be more set suggestions throughout the year too so you might want to wait to decide on how to set the blocks. You can always refer to this page. I'll post a link in the left hand column during the year. YARDAGE & Cutting for the Alternate Block Setting For the squares A & B (light pink) 1 yard For the rectangles C & D (dark pink) 1-3/4 yards Alternate Nine-Patch Set 60" x 60 13 Alternate Blocks 12 Sampler Blocks I used EQ7 to figure out the yardage (EQ8 wasn't available yet) I imagine it works in similar fashion in either program. First I colored the blocks in distinctive fashion so I could read the key. Then I went to Print > Print Fabric Yardage I used the default settings And here's what it said: For the squares A & B (light pink) 7/8 yard For the rectangles C & D (dark pink) 1-1/2 yards I'd add a little more if you want to have some for the sampler blocks too = 1 yard and 1-3/4 yards. Cutting the Alternate Block A—Cut 8 squares 2-1/2” (104 in all for 13 blocks) B—Cut 1 square 4-1/2” (13 in all) C—Cut 4 rectangles 8-1/2” x 2-1/2” (52 in all) D—Cut 4 rectangles 4-1/2” x 2-1/2” (52 in all) The first pattern is set for Wednesday January 31, 2018 Read more about the theme here: https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2017/09/antebellum-album-1840-1860-free-civil.html Class of 1855, teachers in bonnets and students in lace collars. Oberlin College, Ohio

Antebellum Album #7 Chimney Sweep by Becky Brown Southerners anxious to establish schools in the antebellum years had difficulty finding qualified teachers, so they were motivated to offer handsome salaries to well-educated Northerners who agreed to emigrate. Caroline Matilda Seabury, a single 27-year-old with a good New England education, accepted a position teaching French at the Columbus Female Institute in northeastern Mississippi. Caroline Russell Seabury (1827 -1893) Brooklyn, New York to Columbus, Mississippi Caroline had been living with her few surviving relatives, sister Martha and brother Channing, in their uncle's Brooklyn home. The family was prosperous (Uncle Edwin was a dry goods wholesaler) but cursed by tuberculosis. After Mary's father and most of her siblings died of the disease her despairing mother Caroline Plimpton Seabury committed suicide. Caroline left Brooklyn in fall, 1854 seeking an independent life, a difficult step. Columbus Female Institute about 1880 when it became a woman's college "O, the loneliness of that great half furnished place, it overpowered us both. Miss S. who had just left school & for the first time tried a life among strangers---far from home---I with no home felt----both of us utterly heartsick." Sister Martha joined her but Martha was ill too and would soon die. Caroline made friends in Columbus, earning local minor celebrity for her brave care of a young small pox victim in 1857. She maintained ties with some of those friends over her lifetime. Chimney Sweep by Mark Lauer The Block Chimney Sweep Variations on this block must be the most popular friendship pattern. Quilt dated 1852. "The Quilt of Friendship" "The quilt of Freenbship" Mrs. Cowperthwaite wasn't much of a speller but we are glad she tried. You can construct the block in many ways. BlockBase #3266 is easy to cut and piece in diagonal strips. Cutting a 12" Block A- Cut 2 squares 2-3/8". Cut each in half with one diagonal cut. You need 4 small triangles. B- Cut 3 squares. 4-1/4". Cut each into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 12 triangles. C- Cut 6 rectangles 4-3/4" X 2-5/8". D- Cut 3 rectangles 6-7/8" X 2-5/8". E- Cut 4 squares 2-5/8"--- 2 light/2 dark. Chimney Sweep by Denniele Bohannon A Sentiment for July You have a little more room in this block so here's an extravagant flourish---perhaps a music book. Chimney Sweep by Pat Styring During the War & After When Civil War came Caroline stayed at her position in Columbus, ambivalent as to where she belonged. "When will this agony be over?—From the hour when I first saw the Confederate flag flying to this evening there has been a conflict of feeling—personal attachments struggling against inborn principles." She'd made friends in Mississippi; she was dependent on her salary; her sister was buried there. To some degree she'd become a Southerner but never a secessionist. Through her war years she always saw the folly of the Confederate cause and the fallacies in Confederate propaganda, ideas she could confide only to her diary. In 1862 the Vermont-born principal, wary of Northern-born teachers, fired her. She found work tutoring the daughters of George Hampton Young at Waverley Plantation, seven miles from town on the Tombigbee River. Mid-20th century photo of Waverley's Plantation House built in 1852. "My home is pleasant with two little girls to teach---plenty of time for sewing, reading, walking or riding---a great deal too much for thinking..." A year later: "This summer time hangs heavily on my hands...with nothing to sew, because there is no material to be had...Even after learning to twist on a 'great [spinning] wheel' there is nothing left to twist...I have been reduced to the last semblance of occupation---patch-work---in company with my friends here---a last resort in the hour of extremity." Chimney Sweep by Mark Lauer She yearned to go North but could not get a pass to legally cross the lines. In late July, 1863 after the fall of Vicksburg, friends arranged an "opportunity," an undercover wagon ride northwest across the state to Union-held Mississippi River banks with four men, four mules and some cattle. Edwin Forbes's drawing of a four-mule team with an African-American driver, similar to the wagon that took Caroline northwest across Mississippi. Her driver was named Jack. Library of Congress. Caroline's account of the two-week trip through ravaged Mississippi is a classic adventure tale. Her saviors deposited her on Buck Island on the Arkansas side of the river where she feared remaining "a prisoner condemned without a trial." How to catch the attention of the Union army? "A thought came to me---that in my trunk were some pieces of red white & blue silk---remnants of a Union flag....I made as large a flag as I could with them, cut paper stars out of a blank leaf in my note-book---and soon had a Star spangld---though small-sized--national emblem---With a cotton-wood stick for staff, it was tied on---the stars down---in token of distress." Mississippi river steamboat with paroled prisoners aboard, 1865 She waved her flag at a passing boat carrying Union troops from Vicksburg. They stopped and picked her up. She made it to Cincinnati and then back to New York. Channing Seabury's late-19th-century house in St. Paul Caroline's life is known through her diary and her post-war letters, which were included with the papers of her brother Channing, a gilded-age success in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Seabury papers were donated by Channing's wife to the Minnesota Historical Society. Channing Seabury taking the first shovel of dirt at the ground- breaking ceremony for the new Minnesota capitol in 1896. Photo from the Minnesota Historical Society Caroline died in Washington D.C. in 1893 and is buried with her brother and his wife in St. Paul. The Diary of Caroline Seabury, 1854–1863, edited by Suzanne L. Bunkers is still available from the University of Wisconsin Press. See more here: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0283.htm Sarah Elizabeth McKinley's flourish on the 1852 quilt of friendship above Turkey red and white sampler from French72 Antiques with five examples of this month's album block One happy ending in Caroline's story: Waverley's resurrection. It's been restored to its antebellum glory. Here is where she was reduced to "the last semblance of occupation---patch-work." Chimney Sweep by Denniele Bohannon

Antebellum Album Block #9 Lexington Belle by Mark Lauer In the 1830's when Kentucky was considered the American West, Lexington considered itself the Athens of the West. Two French immigrants ran a school in that frontier outpost, an elegant touch in a small American city. Lexington just before the Civil War Waldemare and Charlotte Leclerc Mentelle were supporters of the King, royalists who escaped revolutionary Paris in 1792. Their skills: manners, dancing and the French language. About 1805 Mme. Mentelle began taking student boarders on their farm outside Lexington on land donated to the refugees by Mary Todd Russell Wickcliffe, a wealthy Lexingtonian. Among the boarders was Mary Russell Wickcliffe's great niece Mary Ann Todd, daughter of Kentucky State Representative and business man Robert Smith Todd. The younger Mary's mother had died after the birth of her seventh child when Mary Ann was six. Two years later Robert remarried. Mary's first school was the Shelby Female Academy housed in this building near Gratz Park, known today as the Ridgely House. One solution to conflict between stepmother and Mary was to board the 8-year-old at a nearby school. Mary Ann spent weekends at home, weekdays at the Shelby Female Academy. Portrait of Mrs. Moore's class of young students in a Kentucky silk quilt from Bourbon & Harrison Counties, 1893. Collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, Gift of Herbert Waide Hemphill, Jr. #1987.80 After graduation Mary Ann moved on to Mentelle’s for Young Ladies out on the Richmond Pike. The Mentelles' Rose Hill farm was across the road from Ashland, the home of Kentucky's well-known politician "Henry of the West." The view from Mantelles' school: Ashland with Senator Henry Clay and dog in the front yard. The Mantelles daughter Marie married Clay's son Thomas in 1837. "My early home was truly at a boarding school," wrote Mary to friend Elizabeth Keckley in later life. Teacher and young students in the 1840s Madame provided that home for Mary between 1831 and 1836 and gave her an excellent grounding in French, literature and dancing. Mary became a fluent French speaker who read French books for entertainment throughout her life and spent several years of her widowhood in France. Mary Todd Lincoln (1818-1882), nicknamed "The Republican Queen," considered herself on a par with Queen Victoria and French Empress Eugenie. From Madame she also absorbed aristocratic pretensions that did her no good in her future life as First Lady Mary Lincoln. Members of Lexington's upper class were kind to the Mentelles, supporting their farming and schooling enterprises. When Madame died in 1860 her obituary praised, "Her lofty character, her pure life and great intellect in this community, where she has been loved, honored and venerated for half a century." But Madame left letters to her parents in France revealing the feelings were not mutual. "Lexington has no amiable virtues---its citizens have terrible manners..." When she was 20 Mary Todd moved north to Springfield, Illinois with her sisters far away from their stepmother. There she met lawyer Abraham Lincoln. The Block Album block in a quilt documented in the Massachusetts project. Variations on the block we tend to call Flying Geese were popular with mid-19th-century quilters for albums and repeat block quilts. This month's pattern, BlockBase #2902 is one of the oldest published versions. Names: An Effective Square (rather a dull name) about 1910 Baltimore Belle about the same time And Flying Geese in 1929 The name Lexington Belle can recall the Civil War's "Republican Queen." Lexington Belle by Becky Brown Cutting a 12" Block A - Cut 4 squares 2-7/8". B - Cut 1 square 8-3/8" Cut into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 4 large triangles. C - Cut 4 squares for the geese 3-1/4". Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 8 triangles. D - Cut 6 squares 3-5/8". Cut each into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 24 small triangles. -- E - Cut 1 square 3-7/8". Sewing Lexington Belle by Denniele Bohannon I try to include a regional album variation that relates to the monthly story's location. What kind of album quilt might Mary Todd have made? Strangely enough I have not been able to find one antebellum album quilt from the entire state of Kentucky. See a post on the curious lack of Kentucky pre-war signature quilts here: https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/11/kentucky-album-quilts-curious-absence.html 1930s visual interpretation of 1830's travel time from New York to the greater United States. One could get to NY in 6 days by ship from Charleston but it took 2 weeks to travel from Kentucky. Why no album quilts in the midst of the 1840s and '50s fad? Traveling between Kentucky and coastal cities was not so easy as travel between Philadelphia and Charleston. One could not take an Atlantic coast steamship to Kentucky. Kentuckians on their way to Boston combined Ohio River travel, stage coaches and short line railroads. Kentucky was rather isolated, one reason few Kentuckians are found in the rolls of schools in Philadelphia, Burlington or Hartford. Did this relative isolation result in Kentucky missing the album quilt fad? But Ohio was just across the Ohio River and we can find many album quilts from that state. Perhaps it was just a matter of taste. Album dated 1847 and 1848, with blocks signed Fairmount & Miamisburg, Ohio, & Hardy County, Virginia from the West Virginia project & the Quilt Index. http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=50-8A-472 What kind of quilt might Mary Todd have made---if she indeed made quilts? Block inscribed John Lewis (1784-1858) principal of the Georgetown Female Academy in Kentucky My guess: a silk hexagon or some kind of English paper pieced mosaic design. Some of the most interesting mosaic quilts were made in Kentucky. See a post about Mary Todd Lincoln and quilts here: https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/02/mary-lincoln-quilts.html A Sentiment for August A cherub with a banner from a star block in the Philadelphia Museum of Art. (Andrew Grauel was a coffee roaster by profession.) http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/321675.html?mulR=470577359|169 To see an inspiring selection of inking go to the Philadelphia Museum of Art's search page and search for Quilt Block. Lexington Belle by Denniele Bohannon During the War & After Lexington Belle by Pat Styring Mary Todd Lincoln in the 1850s Mary Ann Todd married Abraham Lincoln in 1842 when she was 22. She, of course, is easy to track through the Civil War, when she was First Lady. Privilege did not keep her from misery. She suffered incredible losses with all of her four boys but one dying before she did and of course, witnessing the horrific assassination of her husband in 1865. During the War her Kentucky relatives chose the Confederacy and two half-brothers were killed in battle as was a brother-in-law. 1871 Photo with a ghostly Abraham Lincoln superimposed She was so unstable that her remaining son Robert had her institutionalized at one point---a sad end to the story of a small girl banished to a boarding school. Lexington Belle by Mark Lauer Read more about Mary Ann Todd's younger years in Jean Harvey Baker's Mary Todd Lincoln: A Biography. And more about the pattern here: https://encyclopediaquiltpatterns.blogspot.com/2018/10/odd-fellows-march.html

Block # 1 Wandering Lover by Becky Brown The first block in our 2018 series Antebellum Album features Indiana Fletcher whose family tells us much about cross border relationships North and South before the Civil War. Unknown class and teacher Throughout the year we'll explore women's academies and signature quilts in the 1840s and '50s. We'll look at school girls whose lives were interrupted by the American Civil War and examine album quilts. Each month I'll post a free pattern for a favorite signature block from those early friendship quilts. Indiana Fletcher 1828-1900 Indiana Fletcher was a woman whose ties to North and South were tightened during her school years. Born in 1828, Indiana's unusual name celebrated her Uncle Calvin's new home on the western frontier. Calvin and Elijah Fletcher were Vermonters who refused to stay put. Seeking opportunity far from his parents' New England farm, Indiana's father Elijah wound up as a Yankee school teacher near Lynchburg, Virginia. He married well-to-do student Maria Antoinette Crawford and in short time became a Southerner--- a slave holder at his Sweet Briar plantation. Indie and sister Betty benefited from their mother's family money and father's faith in education---"the best fortune we can give our children." Indiana traveled north to St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, New Jersey and the class of 1843. Indie attended school across the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania southwest of Burlington New Jersey, the star at the top. Sweet Briar is the lower star. The Episcopal school overlooking the Delaware River was five years old. St Mary's was later named Doane Academy after founder George Washington Doane, who believed girls' curricula should be the same as boys'. He and wife Eliza built Riverside, an Italianate mansion next to the school, with Eliza's money from her first husband. Eliza also used that inheritance to support the school in the early years while it became established as a women's academy with a national reputation. Doane Academy still provides an education for young men and women. The Doane's home, Riverside. St. Mary's influenced Indiana in many ways. Perhaps the most concrete was the makeover she and Betty planned for their Virginia family home, improving the brick farmhouse with a tower on either side, ala Riverside. Father Elijah wrote, "This is a project of my Daughters, and as I rarely deny to gratify any of their desires, have consented this." Remodeling also dictated travels to New York City to buy furniture and keep in touch with friends made in school. Sweet Briar in Virginia in the early 20th century. One can see the bones of a Southern plantation between the towers. Burlington, New Jersey was not only home to important 19th-century boarding schools but also to some of the earliest album quilts. We have no evidence that Indie Fletcher ever contributed to a quilt but as a fashionable young woman in Burlington she must have been aware of the new fad for patchwork albums. Our first signature block---just like Indie---has links to Indiana and New Jersey. The Block Block 1 by Mark Lauer We have four modelmakers this year and two of them are making two sets so you're going to get lots of ideas. Mark's doing one traditional red, yellow & green set. 1843 Signature quilt from Burlington, New Jersey Collection of Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CPQuilts/id/229 A nine-patch variation is not something we might pick for an album block but in the antebellum years that white center square was seen as the perfect spot for a name and sentiment. No applique in this block of the month! But you might get ideas. Those buds stitched in the corners are pretty cute. I've seen two albums dated 1842 and 1843 with the pictured pattern---both from New Jersey and both attributed to Quakers. The quilt directly above with sashing is the cover quilt on the New Jersey Quilts book. Variations were common for albums from the complex version above to a simpler version below. Online Auction. Quilt looks to be about 1880-1910. The pattern is BlockBase #1700 I've picked a pattern of medium complexity: #1700 in BlockBase. (#1702 is for the ambitious---54 small HST's per block.) Late 19th-century version of #1702 The oldest published name I've found is Wandering Lover, published in Hearth & Home magazine in 1895, an appropriate name for Southerner Indie and a certain New York minister, two people divided by Civil War. Mark's second set is done in the bright and black repros we call neon prints today---black novelty prints from about 1910. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 3 background squares 4-7/8” Cut each in half diagonally. You need six large triangles. B— Cut 9 dark and 3 light squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 18 dark and 6 light of the smaller triangles. C--- Cut 3 squares 4-1/2”. Block 1 by Pat Styring Pat is doing her distinctive collage-like interpretation: a little applique, a lot of fussy-cutting. The Civil War & After Indiana Fletcher Williams, perhaps in the 1880s. When Civil War broke out Indie was a rich single woman, a 33-year-old slave-holder living on the family plantation. Her personal war was less painful than that of many Virginians. Sweet Briar remained safe from fighting so many of her trials were just tribulations. The railroads no longer ran; food and goods were scarce. And she missed her Northern travels. Pass for travel in Virginia right after the War. Indie applied for a pass to cross into the Union from Virginia. In 1864 she asked Uncle Calvin to recommend her, hoping to escape the South where "fortunes are vanishing like the glories of the setting sun." Calvin Fletcher refused to vouch for her loyalty, fearing she'd try to get her hands on the Vermont family farm, but I would guess Indiana's motivation to cross the lines was more romance than greed. James Henry Williams Frustrated travel plans may have included a visit to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where J.H. Williams was an Episcopal minister. Once the war ended Williams visited Sweet Briar and married Indie soon after. Daughter Maria Georgiana (Daisy) was born in 1867. The Fletchers' fortune did not vanish with the Confederacy's setting sun and she and Williams continued to prosper throughout the century, dividing their time between New York and Virginia, while Daisy attended Manhattan schools. Daisy Williams (1867 -1884) Sadly, their only child inherited a debilitating disease and died at the age of 16. Her broken-hearted parents moved permanently to New York. In 1889 when J.H. Williams died his will requested Indiana use their fortune and Virginia land to establish a women's school in Daisy's memory. You may be familiar with Sweet Briar, a private women's liberal arts college on 3,000 acres near Lynchburg. Sweet Briar College in 1914, fourteen years after Indiana Fletcher Williams's death. Indie's mansion still stands Sweet Briar College was recently named a top ten small school in Forbes' Magazines survey. Denniele Bohannon is also doing two sets in high contrast brights. This is from her pink set. And this one with more triangles is from her blue set. BlockBase #1701. Sentiment for July Each month I'll show an inked flourish from a mid-century album. You might want to print it and trace it. Or try some free-hand grape vines with your signature. Information about the Fletcher/Williams family is abundant. I first read Indie's tale in a group biography of her father's family. Our Family Dreams is by Daniel Blake Smith. Album sold at Hindman Auctions about 15 years ago with a variation of this month's block on the top row next to the willow tree. If you'd prefer you can buy the patterns for Antebellum Album in my Etsy shop. I've packaged blocks 1-4, which you can buy as a PDF to print yourself for $5. Or I'll print it on my black & white printer and mail it to you for $9. You'll be getting patterns January through April ahead of everyone else so don't be telling anybody. Here are the links: https://www.etsy.com/listing/589746451/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4? https://www.etsy.com/listing/575941078/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4?

It's 2018 and I haven't told you enough about the new free Block of the Month here at Civil War Quilts. The twelve sampler blocks will all be pieced, drawn from designs popular for Antebellum Album quilts. Most of the samplers I've looked at mixed applique and pieced blocks, but we're focusing on piecing in 2018. I've selected 12 of the popular pieced designs seen in samplers and signature quilts from the 1840s & '50s. Some of the patterns I chose are in this album quilt from the Massachusetts project & the Quilt Index. (No Sunflowers! No applique!) The blocks will be easy to moderately difficult what with a few curved & Y seams. I'll post patterns on the last Wednesday of each month in 2018. You don't have to sign up, the patterns are free here. If you prefer you can buy a PDF download of four patterns three times during 2018 from my Etsy store. I'll mail you the paper patterns or you can print them yourself. I'll post the first set on Etsy on the last of this month. Readers are clamoring for fabric information. (Well, one of you.) Becky Brown's stack. See what the model makers have chosen at this post: https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2017/11/next-years-civil-war-block-of-month.html Yardage for the 12" Finished Sampler Blocks If you're planning to use scraps for your 12 sampler blocks I'd pick a color palette and maybe buy a yard of background or a theme fabric (perhaps adding that yard to one of the setting block fabrics below). Or just buy a bunch of repro prints. Here's a cornucopia of gorgeous Jo Morton prints I saw for sale the other day. If you want to use the same fabrics throughout the 12 sampler blocks: I'd pick 5--- Light, Light medium, Medium, Medium dark and Dark. Sort of shaded like the above. Really dark, really light and then three in between. Choose a background too and buy a yard of that, and then half yards of the 5 others. That gives you 3-1/2 yards for the sampler blocks. Should be plenty. You'll also need a half yard for binding the 60" quilt. The Official Set Turkey red and overdyed green 1840-1880. We have to have an official set that all the model makers can ignore. (They follow their own muses, which is fine with me.) I've chosen a double nine patch, a classic old American pattern. There will probably be more set suggestions throughout the year too so you might want to wait to decide on how to set the blocks. You can always refer to this page. I'll post a link in the left hand column during the year. YARDAGE & Cutting for the Alternate Block Setting For the squares A & B (light pink) 1 yard For the rectangles C & D (dark pink) 1-3/4 yards Alternate Nine-Patch Set 60" x 60 13 Alternate Blocks 12 Sampler Blocks I used EQ7 to figure out the yardage (EQ8 wasn't available yet) I imagine it works in similar fashion in either program. First I colored the blocks in distinctive fashion so I could read the key. Then I went to Print > Print Fabric Yardage I used the default settings And here's what it said: For the squares A & B (light pink) 7/8 yard For the rectangles C & D (dark pink) 1-1/2 yards I'd add a little more if you want to have some for the sampler blocks too = 1 yard and 1-3/4 yards. Cutting the Alternate Block A—Cut 8 squares 2-1/2” (104 in all for 13 blocks) B—Cut 1 square 4-1/2” (13 in all) C—Cut 4 rectangles 8-1/2” x 2-1/2” (52 in all) D—Cut 4 rectangles 4-1/2” x 2-1/2” (52 in all) The first pattern is set for Wednesday January 31, 2018 Read more about the theme here: https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2017/09/antebellum-album-1840-1860-free-civil.html Class of 1855, teachers in bonnets and students in lace collars. Oberlin College, Ohio

Block # 1 Wandering Lover by Becky Brown The first block in our 2018 series Antebellum Album features Indiana Fletcher whose family tells us much about cross border relationships North and South before the Civil War. Unknown class and teacher Throughout the year we'll explore women's academies and signature quilts in the 1840s and '50s. We'll look at school girls whose lives were interrupted by the American Civil War and examine album quilts. Each month I'll post a free pattern for a favorite signature block from those early friendship quilts. Indiana Fletcher 1828-1900 Indiana Fletcher was a woman whose ties to North and South were tightened during her school years. Born in 1828, Indiana's unusual name celebrated her Uncle Calvin's new home on the western frontier. Calvin and Elijah Fletcher were Vermonters who refused to stay put. Seeking opportunity far from his parents' New England farm, Indiana's father Elijah wound up as a Yankee school teacher near Lynchburg, Virginia. He married well-to-do student Maria Antoinette Crawford and in short time became a Southerner--- a slave holder at his Sweet Briar plantation. Indie and sister Betty benefited from their mother's family money and father's faith in education---"the best fortune we can give our children." Indiana traveled north to St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, New Jersey and the class of 1843. Indie attended school across the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania southwest of Burlington New Jersey, the star at the top. Sweet Briar is the lower star. The Episcopal school overlooking the Delaware River was five years old. St Mary's was later named Doane Academy after founder George Washington Doane, who believed girls' curricula should be the same as boys'. He and wife Eliza built Riverside, an Italianate mansion next to the school, with Eliza's money from her first husband. Eliza also used that inheritance to support the school in the early years while it became established as a women's academy with a national reputation. Doane Academy still provides an education for young men and women. The Doane's home, Riverside. St. Mary's influenced Indiana in many ways. Perhaps the most concrete was the makeover she and Betty planned for their Virginia family home, improving the brick farmhouse with a tower on either side, ala Riverside. Father Elijah wrote, "This is a project of my Daughters, and as I rarely deny to gratify any of their desires, have consented this." Remodeling also dictated travels to New York City to buy furniture and keep in touch with friends made in school. Sweet Briar in Virginia in the early 20th century. One can see the bones of a Southern plantation between the towers. Burlington, New Jersey was not only home to important 19th-century boarding schools but also to some of the earliest album quilts. We have no evidence that Indie Fletcher ever contributed to a quilt but as a fashionable young woman in Burlington she must have been aware of the new fad for patchwork albums. Our first signature block---just like Indie---has links to Indiana and New Jersey. The Block Block 1 by Mark Lauer We have four modelmakers this year and two of them are making two sets so you're going to get lots of ideas. Mark's doing one traditional red, yellow & green set. 1843 Signature quilt from Burlington, New Jersey Collection of Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CPQuilts/id/229 A nine-patch variation is not something we might pick for an album block but in the antebellum years that white center square was seen as the perfect spot for a name and sentiment. No applique in this block of the month! But you might get ideas. Those buds stitched in the corners are pretty cute. I've seen two albums dated 1842 and 1843 with the pictured pattern---both from New Jersey and both attributed to Quakers. The quilt directly above with sashing is the cover quilt on the New Jersey Quilts book. Variations were common for albums from the complex version above to a simpler version below. Online Auction. Quilt looks to be about 1880-1910. The pattern is BlockBase #1700 I've picked a pattern of medium complexity: #1700 in BlockBase. (#1702 is for the ambitious---54 small HST's per block.) Late 19th-century version of #1702 The oldest published name I've found is Wandering Lover, published in Hearth & Home magazine in 1895, an appropriate name for Southerner Indie and a certain New York minister, two people divided by Civil War. Mark's second set is done in the bright and black repros we call neon prints today---black novelty prints from about 1910. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 3 background squares 4-7/8” Cut each in half diagonally. You need six large triangles. B— Cut 9 dark and 3 light squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 18 dark and 6 light of the smaller triangles. C--- Cut 3 squares 4-1/2”. Block 1 by Pat Styring Pat is doing her distinctive collage-like interpretation: a little applique, a lot of fussy-cutting. The Civil War & After Indiana Fletcher Williams, perhaps in the 1880s. When Civil War broke out Indie was a rich single woman, a 33-year-old slave-holder living on the family plantation. Her personal war was less painful than that of many Virginians. Sweet Briar remained safe from fighting so many of her trials were just tribulations. The railroads no longer ran; food and goods were scarce. And she missed her Northern travels. Pass for travel in Virginia right after the War. Indie applied for a pass to cross into the Union from Virginia. In 1864 she asked Uncle Calvin to recommend her, hoping to escape the South where "fortunes are vanishing like the glories of the setting sun." Calvin Fletcher refused to vouch for her loyalty, fearing she'd try to get her hands on the Vermont family farm, but I would guess Indiana's motivation to cross the lines was more romance than greed. James Henry Williams Frustrated travel plans may have included a visit to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where J.H. Williams was an Episcopal minister. Once the war ended Williams visited Sweet Briar and married Indie soon after. Daughter Maria Georgiana (Daisy) was born in 1867. The Fletchers' fortune did not vanish with the Confederacy's setting sun and she and Williams continued to prosper throughout the century, dividing their time between New York and Virginia, while Daisy attended Manhattan schools. Daisy Williams (1867 -1884) Sadly, their only child inherited a debilitating disease and died at the age of 16. Her broken-hearted parents moved permanently to New York. In 1889 when J.H. Williams died his will requested Indiana use their fortune and Virginia land to establish a women's school in Daisy's memory. You may be familiar with Sweet Briar, a private women's liberal arts college on 3,000 acres near Lynchburg. Sweet Briar College in 1914, fourteen years after Indiana Fletcher Williams's death. Indie's mansion still stands Sweet Briar College was recently named a top ten small school in Forbes' Magazines survey. Denniele Bohannon is also doing two sets in high contrast brights. This is from her pink set. And this one with more triangles is from her blue set. BlockBase #1701. Sentiment for July Each month I'll show an inked flourish from a mid-century album. You might want to print it and trace it. Or try some free-hand grape vines with your signature. Information about the Fletcher/Williams family is abundant. I first read Indie's tale in a group biography of her father's family. Our Family Dreams is by Daniel Blake Smith. Album sold at Hindman Auctions about 15 years ago with a variation of this month's block on the top row next to the willow tree. If you'd prefer you can buy the patterns for Antebellum Album in my Etsy shop. I've packaged blocks 1-4, which you can buy as a PDF to print yourself for $5. Or I'll print it on my black & white printer and mail it to you for $9. You'll be getting patterns January through April ahead of everyone else so don't be telling anybody. Here are the links: https://www.etsy.com/listing/589746451/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4? https://www.etsy.com/listing/575941078/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4?

Antebellum Album #12: A Double Life by Becky Brown Our last block in the Antebellum Album series recalls Emily Wharton Sinkler. Philadelphia's Navy Asylum housed the Naval Academy In the antebellum period Philadelphia was the center for American education, not only in its elite French Schools for women but also for men's academies and colleges, among them the predecessor of the U.S. Naval Academy. Charles Sinkler of South Carolina attended classes there in 1841 training to be a Midshipman. Emily Wharton Sinkler (1823-1875) After his year in Philadelphia he forged a long-term Northern connection, marrying 19-year-old Emily Wharton daughter of a real estate lawyer. Philadelphia snob Sidney George Fisher was not fond of the women in Emily's family. Her mother and older sister "are at the head of the blue school of mawkish, sentimental, would be literary ladies lately got up here. They are more darkly, deeply blue than the rest." By blue he meant well-read and educated. We can imagine how a couple of attractive and well-bred young people, a naval officer and a Philadelphia belle (if a little blue), may have met and courted. St. Stephen's Church where Emily married still stands in Philadelphia. A Southern planter and a woman descended from Quaker Philadelphia's founders might face conflicts often seen in mixed marriages like the union between actress Fanny Kemble and slave-holder Pierce Butler. By the time of Emily's 1842 marriage the battling Butlers were the talk of Philadelphia. Butler and Kemble divorced in 1849 Surely someone must have pointed to the Butlers as a cautionary tale before Emily wed and sailed south to live in Orangeburg County on the Santee River. 1911 map with plantation areas in pink and the city of Charleston at the red arrow. Much of their neighborhood is now under Lakes Moultrie & Marion. Eutaw, 1939, from the Library of Congress, a Sinkler cotton plantation where Emily joined the family in 1842. These Lowcountry plantation homes were not mansions imagined in movie sets of Tara. Yet, Emily and Charles's marriage was a success, not only at the personal level but also because it affected so many family members in positive fashion. A prime reason for that success was shared social class. As Daniel Kilbride pointed out in his book An American Aristocracy: Southern Planters in Philadelphia, antebellum families like the Wharton and Sinklers valued membership in an American aristocracy as more important than any North/South cultural differences. Emily would have raised far more eyebrows had she married a middling Philadelphian. A second factor was Emily's personality. She was no prima donna but a sunny, energetic woman who grew to love her in-laws. A third important contributor was the young Sinklers decision to split their year between two cultures. Twice a year Emily traveled by ship between her two homes. Fall trips back to South Carolina during hurricane season caused much anxiety. The Sinklers were comfortable in their double life, spending October through March in South Carolina Lowcountry and spring and summer, the sickly season, in Philadelphia. Her parents' Pennsylvania home and later one of their own provided a refuge from Carolina's climate and a cosmopolitan cycle to their antebellum years. Center of a Carolina Lowcountry white work quilt attributed to Charlotte Evance Cordes (1767-1826) in the collection of the D.A.R. Museum http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=46-7A-4E Chestnut Street, Philadelphia, in 1856. L.J. Levy & Sons is on the corner at left. Chestnut Street was the place to promenade and Levy's the place to shop. Emily may have spent many months every year in a rural backwater but she did not lack for civilization's blessings. The Whartons sent Philadelphia newspapers, English magazines, novels---and fabric. She kept up with fashion through Godey's and Peterson's. Summer trips to Philadelphia included shopping on Chestnut Street. When at the the plantations she often asked her family to purchase fabric at Levy's. In 1848 she wrote sister Mary: "I enclosed a note asking you to see about some furniture chintz for me....I wish you would inquire the price in Philadelphia and let me know in your next letter. Don't forget this." Levy's interior could not have been as magnificent as this lithograph claims but it was the fashionable yard goods store. In 1852 Mary sent fabric swatches. "The patterns gave me great satisfaction," wrote Emily. At first I guessed she meant dress patterns but I realize she was talking about the print fabrics as patterns. Charles "was keen for getting four dresses of the sort but I thinking that, rather too much of one good thing, am contented with getting one. Will you therefore get me 10 yards of the blue and [sister-in-law] Anna 10 yards of the brown.....Please get me some patterns of whatever they have pretty at Levy's in the way of Spring and Summer best dresses...." The Block A Double Life by Mark Lauer The star inside another star (a good idea) is not that common in antique quilts. Here's one that looks to be about 1900 from a Quilters Newsletter cover. BlockBase #2167. The Ladies' Art Company called it Stars & Squares about 1890; Ruth Finley Rising Star in 1929. This album found in the Connecticut project has Turkey red blocks dated 1847 to 1855, set together with a gold print. The double star recalls Emily's two homes and two families. A Double Life by Pat Styring Cutting a 12" Finished Block A - Cut 5 squares 3-1/2". B - Cut 1 square 7-1/4". Cut into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 4 triangles. C - Cut 4 squares 3-7/8". Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 8 triangles. D - Cut 4 squares 2". E - Cut 1 square 4-1/4". Cut into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 4 triangles. F - Cut 1 square 2-3/8". Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 8 triangles. Sewing A Double Life by Denniele Bohannon Giant vintage double star medallion from Laura Fisher's inventory A Sentiment for December Here's a 3" wide version of Hannah Dubree's signature in a music book from a star block in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art: http://www.philamuseum.org/collections/permanent/321654.html?mulR=1330222659|9 During the War & After Sailing between homes in Philadelphia and Charleston came to an end after the battle of Fort Sumter in Charleston's bay in 1861. Emily and Charles remained in South Carolina throughout the war. With his conflicted loyalties Charles did not enlist but eldest son Wharton Sinkler (1845-1910) joined the South Carolina Cavalry when he was 17. 2nd South Carolina Cavalry in camp Confederate troops brought slaves to do chores like cooking and laundry. Wharton Sinkler was accompanied by Mingo Rivers (1829-1880). Both Wharton and Mingo survived the war. Wharton attended medical school at the University of Pennsylvania and remained a Philadelphian for the rest of his life. Mingo returned to South Carolina where he is buried in the plantations' burial grounds. Emily is there too in a cemetery now an island in Lake Marion, which diverted the Santee River and Eutaw Creek and flooded the Sinkler plantations in the 1940s. A Double Life by Mark Lauer Emily's descendants have documented her life well. Read her antebellum letters in the book Between North and South: The Letters of Emily Wharton Sinkler, 1842–1865. Edited by Anne Sinkler Whaley LeClercq. See a preview here: https://books.google.com/books?id=i1SeQq_M5vYC&printsec=frontcover&dq=emily+wharton+sinkler&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUps7Q5OvWAhWm14MKHQaxAU8Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=emily%20wharton%20sinkler&f=false And see more about her here: https://books.google.com/books?id=JKTqCQAAQBAJ&pg=PA20&dq=emily+wharton+sinkler&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUps7Q5OvWAhWm14MKHQaxAU8Q6AEIPTAE#v=onepage&q=emily%20wharton%20sinkler&f=false https://books.google.com/books?id=RzUgnbfcH5sC&pg=PA50&dq=emily+wharton+sinkler&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjUps7Q5OvWAhWm14MKHQaxAU8Q6AEIUDAH#v=onepage&q=emily%20wharton%20sinkler&f=false A Double Life by Denniele Bohannon We are finished! 12 blocks. Becky Brown's beautiful top.

Antebellum Album #2 Lend & Borrow by Pat Styring Emiline F. Cross attended Mount Holyoke Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, thirty miles from her home, graduating from the elite women's academy in 1854 when she was about twenty. She must have been well-liked as classmates made her a gift of an album quilt. Emiline's quilt from Massachusetts Quilts: Our Common Wealth. Collection of the Blandford, Massachusetts Historical Society The pattern was also popular. We'd call it Lady of the Lake or Lost Ship. The name Lend & Borrow refers to the way the red and white shapes shift from positive to negative spaces when it's set like this. Just like last month's block, it's not what we'd think of when we decide to piece a friendship quilt. But Emiline's generation, the first to adapt albums to patchwork, thought the block with two different triangles quite the thing for single pattern or sampler quilts. Quilt with blocks dated 1839-1843 from the Silber Family collection, possibly New Jersey. Blocks in this quilt dated 1839 are among the earliest surviving examples of friendship style blocks. Mount Holyoke about 1870. Over 300 pupils and teachers lived in the five-story building. Mary Lyon, 1797-1849 Like founder Mary Lyon, Mt. Holyoke Seminary became a pillar of New England's cultural temple so Southern girls were unlikely to enroll. Classroom and students about 1870 In a list of 307 students and teachers in Emiline's class of 1853-1854 the majority were from New England states with westerners from Pennsylvania and Indiana to Wisconsin. I counted only one woman who might be considered a Southerner in the class of 1853-54. (Two others were from St. Louis and Washington City, cities with Southern roots that remained in the Union.) Sarah Jane Foster traveled from Jonesborough, Tennessee to South Hadley, Massachusetts for school. Most of her fellow pupils were from the green Union states here. Sarah Jane's interest in Mt. Holyoke might have been due to dreams of becoming a missionary. Alumni records indicate she married a widowed missionary in 1860, taught in Oroomiah, Persia and returned to Tennessee in 1869 after his death. Same classroom, same day Why did New Jersey's St. Mary's Seminary attract Virginians like Indiana Fletcher while Mt. Holyoke enrolled more girls from the South Pacific than the southern states? It was probably both curriculum and culture. Mt. Holyoke's classes were more academic than schools aiming to turn out cultured wives: Latin and logic, history, philosophy, algebra, music, science and calisthenics followed by examinations described as "severe" by Emily Dickinson. A Mount Holyoke graduate might become a teacher, spreading Miss Lyons's ideals to the next generation. The Library Mt. Holyoke's values were embedded in New England's culture of independence, self reliance, reform and improvement. Rather than being waited upon, students shared housekeeping chores. Mary Lyon not only hoped to create devout Christians of her pupils, she also encouraged them to "Attempt great things, accomplish great things." Southern parents would not be pleased to find their daughters returned as unmarriageable blue stockings and reformers. Olympia Brown was in Emiline's class. She may have decided Mt. Holyoke wasn't radical enough as she transferred to Antioch College and later attended theological school, ordained as a minister in 1863. This pair is thought to be friends Emily Dickinson and Kate Turner. Emily Dickinson attended Mt. Holyoke for the 1847-1848 term. Some speculate the religious focus was too much for the poet. While Mary Lyons ruled religious temperament was graded: students who professed, those who hoped to, and girls without hope. Emily remained in the last group. How many other Mt. Holyoke students received an album quilt from friends? Emiline's, well documented by Lynne Z. Bassett for the Massachusetts project, is one of two in the literature right now. This block from missionary Mary Matthews's 1888 album would have warmed Miss Lyons's heart. See the quilt here: https://ascdc.mtholyoke.edu/exhibits/show/marymatthews/quilt "Sharer in all the joys and sorrows of Holyoke life, Lizzie Hanmer, Wethersfield, Conn." The Block Denniele Bohannon's blue and white version Students at the Friends' Institute in New York City made a similar friendship quilt for teacher Patience Smith in 1852 with many names in the appliqued border. See more about this quilt: http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/12/patience-smith-sacred-to-memory.html One of the many variations of the pattern shown as a block about 1890 by the Ladies' Art Company, which called it Lady of the Lake In repeat block versions the large half-square-triangle is the block, the smaller triangles form the sashing. ROTARY CUTTING A 12” BLOCK A—Cut 6 dark & 6 light squares 3-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally into 2 triangles. You need 12 light and 12 dark triangles. B—Cut 1 dark & 1 light square 6-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally into 2 triangles. You need 1 light and 1 dark triangle. SEWING By Mark Lauer Album quilt date-inscribed 1842-43. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. https://collections.lacma.org/node/170294 Another early version in red and white. The Civil War and After Here her name is spelled Emeline Tracking Emiline Cross into the Civil War years reveals she married Edward Lay Tinker, about 15 years older than she in 1856. She died in 1863 leaving two boys---a five-year-old and a baby. Emiline's quilt might have survived only because she did not. It's now in the Blandford Historical Society, the town where she was born. Emiline's Tennessee classmate Sarah Jane Foster's Civil War was fought far away in Persia. She married widowed missionary Samuel Audley Rhea in Jonesborough May, 1860. By July she was on a boat from Boston to Kurdistan. Sarah Foster Rhea in the middle east. She spent the years 1860-1865 with the Kurdish people. You can read her adventures in her husband's biography The Tennessean in Persia & Koordistan. https://books.google.com/books?id=QUM4MpsulqkC&dq=samuel+audley+rhea&source=gbs_navlinks_s By Mark Lauer Sentiment for February Inked sentiment from an 1854 quilt. We tend to be perfectionists but many of these inked blocks were not skillfully drawn. That's called charm. And if you blot the ink---make it part of the design. The eagle in the inking Read Lynne Z. Bassett's essay on Emiline Cross's quilt here: http://www.massquilts.org/Docs/MHC_Essay.pdf Denniele's pink version Dated 1851 A colorful sampler album belonging to the Stratford [Connecticut] Historical Society includes several versions of this month's block. From the Connecticut Project & the Quilt Index. Lend & Borrow by Becky Brown Post pictures of your blocks in our Facebook group. Ask to join and I'll let you in---or just lurk to watch the fun. Bookmark this link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/799666626885682/ The photos of Mount Holyoke are from this site: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~dalbino/photos/stereos.html

Watercolor of a quilt date inscribed 1847 from the W.P.A.'s Index of American Design The quiltmaker was Caroline Lusk of New Baltimore, New York; the painter Jenny Algrem in 1938. The quilt has been in the collection of the Brooklyn Museum since 1925. https://www.nga.gov/features/slideshows/textiles-from-the-index-of-american-design.html#slide_1 Lucy Irene Blowers, about 1849, Fabius, New York Caroline's quilt with its on-point set and minimal appliqued edge design is similar to another New York album quilt that Linda Lipsett showed in her book Remember Me. The idea of setting our Antebellum Album blocks on point with sashing and an appliqued edge block occurred to me. If you enjoy applique it's a nice option. You'd really have to enjoy applique to do this set and border from a New Jersey quilt from Stella Rubin's inventory. It's Block #6 Friendship Star set on the diagonal with three or four simple appliques in the edge triangles. Now Barbara Schaffer has noticed this appliqued edge to a pieced quilt too. Inspired by Lucy Blowers's quilt Barbara stitched a mini. The block is #7 Chimney Sweep. https://barbaradschaffer.blogspot.com/2018/07/antebellum-6-and-chimney-sweep.html Antebellum Album 63.75" x 63.75" I had a very similar idea for this alternate set using the leaves from the Brooklyn Museum's quilt. Above, the first seven blocks on point. For this set you need 13 blocks instead of twelve. I drew the quilt up in EQ with 3" finished sashing. My mockup is rather crude but it shows that you need 8 large triangles with applique and then 4 corner triangles Applique Patterns Here's a modified version of the three-lobed leaf in the Brooklyn Museum's album, one piece, no stem. The two-lobed leaf is for the corners. To Print: Create a word file or a new empty JPG file. Click on the image above. Right click on it and save it to your file. Print that file. Check to be sure the inch box is an inch. Add seam allowances when you cut the fabric. Applique Backgrounds 7/8 of a yard for the background triangles. The finished block size is 12" so the 8 edge triangles backgrounds should be cut like so: Cut 2 squares 18-1/4". Cut each into 4 triangles with two diagonal cuts. You need 8 triangles. For the 4 corner triangles: Cut 2 squares 9-3/8". Cut each in half diagonally with one cut. You need 4 triangles. Sashing Fabric: 3 yards. You should be able to get the binding out of that too. Cutting the Sashing 18 strips 3-1/2" x 12-1/2" 2 strips 3-1/2" x 18-1/2" 2 strips 3-1/2" x 48-1/2" 2 strips 3-1/2" x 78-1/2" What about that 13th block? You could use four of the tri-lobed leaf for a center applique. Put some fancy inking in the center of the center block.

Block # 1 Wandering Lover by Becky Brown The first block in our 2018 series Antebellum Album features Indiana Fletcher whose family tells us much about cross border relationships North and South before the Civil War. Unknown class and teacher Throughout the year we'll explore women's academies and signature quilts in the 1840s and '50s. We'll look at school girls whose lives were interrupted by the American Civil War and examine album quilts. Each month I'll post a free pattern for a favorite signature block from those early friendship quilts. Indiana Fletcher 1828-1900 Indiana Fletcher was a woman whose ties to North and South were tightened during her school years. Born in 1828, Indiana's unusual name celebrated her Uncle Calvin's new home on the western frontier. Calvin and Elijah Fletcher were Vermonters who refused to stay put. Seeking opportunity far from his parents' New England farm, Indiana's father Elijah wound up as a Yankee school teacher near Lynchburg, Virginia. He married well-to-do student Maria Antoinette Crawford and in short time became a Southerner--- a slave holder at his Sweet Briar plantation. Indie and sister Betty benefited from their mother's family money and father's faith in education---"the best fortune we can give our children." Indiana traveled north to St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, New Jersey and the class of 1843. Indie attended school across the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania southwest of Burlington New Jersey, the star at the top. Sweet Briar is the lower star. The Episcopal school overlooking the Delaware River was five years old. St Mary's was later named Doane Academy after founder George Washington Doane, who believed girls' curricula should be the same as boys'. He and wife Eliza built Riverside, an Italianate mansion next to the school, with Eliza's money from her first husband. Eliza also used that inheritance to support the school in the early years while it became established as a women's academy with a national reputation. Doane Academy still provides an education for young men and women. The Doane's home, Riverside. St. Mary's influenced Indiana in many ways. Perhaps the most concrete was the makeover she and Betty planned for their Virginia family home, improving the brick farmhouse with a tower on either side, ala Riverside. Father Elijah wrote, "This is a project of my Daughters, and as I rarely deny to gratify any of their desires, have consented this." Remodeling also dictated travels to New York City to buy furniture and keep in touch with friends made in school. Sweet Briar in Virginia in the early 20th century. One can see the bones of a Southern plantation between the towers. Burlington, New Jersey was not only home to important 19th-century boarding schools but also to some of the earliest album quilts. We have no evidence that Indie Fletcher ever contributed to a quilt but as a fashionable young woman in Burlington she must have been aware of the new fad for patchwork albums. Our first signature block---just like Indie---has links to Indiana and New Jersey. The Block Block 1 by Mark Lauer We have four modelmakers this year and two of them are making two sets so you're going to get lots of ideas. Mark's doing one traditional red, yellow & green set. 1843 Signature quilt from Burlington, New Jersey Collection of Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CPQuilts/id/229 A nine-patch variation is not something we might pick for an album block but in the antebellum years that white center square was seen as the perfect spot for a name and sentiment. No applique in this block of the month! But you might get ideas. Those buds stitched in the corners are pretty cute. I've seen two albums dated 1842 and 1843 with the pictured pattern---both from New Jersey and both attributed to Quakers. The quilt directly above with sashing is the cover quilt on the New Jersey Quilts book. Variations were common for albums from the complex version above to a simpler version below. Online Auction. Quilt looks to be about 1880-1910. The pattern is BlockBase #1700 I've picked a pattern of medium complexity: #1700 in BlockBase. (#1702 is for the ambitious---54 small HST's per block.) Late 19th-century version of #1702 The oldest published name I've found is Wandering Lover, published in Hearth & Home magazine in 1895, an appropriate name for Southerner Indie and a certain New York minister, two people divided by Civil War. Mark's second set is done in the bright and black repros we call neon prints today---black novelty prints from about 1910. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 3 background squares 4-7/8” Cut each in half diagonally. You need six large triangles. B— Cut 9 dark and 3 light squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 18 dark and 6 light of the smaller triangles. C--- Cut 3 squares 4-1/2”. Block 1 by Pat Styring Pat is doing her distinctive collage-like interpretation: a little applique, a lot of fussy-cutting. The Civil War & After Indiana Fletcher Williams, perhaps in the 1880s. When Civil War broke out Indie was a rich single woman, a 33-year-old slave-holder living on the family plantation. Her personal war was less painful than that of many Virginians. Sweet Briar remained safe from fighting so many of her trials were just tribulations. The railroads no longer ran; food and goods were scarce. And she missed her Northern travels. Pass for travel in Virginia right after the War. Indie applied for a pass to cross into the Union from Virginia. In 1864 she asked Uncle Calvin to recommend her, hoping to escape the South where "fortunes are vanishing like the glories of the setting sun." Calvin Fletcher refused to vouch for her loyalty, fearing she'd try to get her hands on the Vermont family farm, but I would guess Indiana's motivation to cross the lines was more romance than greed. James Henry Williams Frustrated travel plans may have included a visit to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where J.H. Williams was an Episcopal minister. Once the war ended Williams visited Sweet Briar and married Indie soon after. Daughter Maria Georgiana (Daisy) was born in 1867. The Fletchers' fortune did not vanish with the Confederacy's setting sun and she and Williams continued to prosper throughout the century, dividing their time between New York and Virginia, while Daisy attended Manhattan schools. Daisy Williams (1867 -1884) Sadly, their only child inherited a debilitating disease and died at the age of 16. Her broken-hearted parents moved permanently to New York. In 1889 when J.H. Williams died his will requested Indiana use their fortune and Virginia land to establish a women's school in Daisy's memory. You may be familiar with Sweet Briar, a private women's liberal arts college on 3,000 acres near Lynchburg. Sweet Briar College in 1914, fourteen years after Indiana Fletcher Williams's death. Indie's mansion still stands Sweet Briar College was recently named a top ten small school in Forbes' Magazines survey. Denniele Bohannon is also doing two sets in high contrast brights. This is from her pink set. And this one with more triangles is from her blue set. BlockBase #1701. Sentiment for July Each month I'll show an inked flourish from a mid-century album. You might want to print it and trace it. Or try some free-hand grape vines with your signature. Information about the Fletcher/Williams family is abundant. I first read Indie's tale in a group biography of her father's family. Our Family Dreams is by Daniel Blake Smith. Album sold at Hindman Auctions about 15 years ago with a variation of this month's block on the top row next to the willow tree. If you'd prefer you can buy the patterns for Antebellum Album in my Etsy shop. I've packaged blocks 1-4, which you can buy as a PDF to print yourself for $5. Or I'll print it on my black & white printer and mail it to you for $9. You'll be getting patterns January through April ahead of everyone else so don't be telling anybody. Here are the links: https://www.etsy.com/listing/589746451/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4? https://www.etsy.com/listing/575941078/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4?

Antebellum Album 4: Quaker Pride by Mark Lauer Block from the Aimwell School Quilt, Philadelphia, 1847. Collection of the Historical Society of Moorestown, New Jersey. This month's block is found in a lovely Quaker quilt made for a 30-year-old Philadelphia teacher. "Presented by the Pupils of the Aimwell School to their Teacher, Sarah D. Powell, 1847." We saw the quilt at the AQSG meeting in New Jersey a few years ago. I recognize Karen Alexander, Ginny Gunn and me admiring the fabrics. The Aimwell School, on Cherry Street below 10th, photographed by Robert Newell, about 1870. Sarah Dutton Powell was born in Nether Providence, Pennsylvania, in 1817. Her own schooling was at the Quaker Westtown School in Chester County, where she graduated with the class of 1838. Embroidered sampler featuring the Westtown School founded in 1799, near Philadelphia. When Sarah was a student the female curriculum at Westtown still emphasized sewing. A short history of the sewing room there: "Sewing was generally taught in girls' schools over the country; it was a special recommendation to a teacher that she could make a handsome sampler—at times that was the main object in attending school....In 1815 we are told that 'two weeks out of six were passed by the little girls in the sewing-room, no matter what their proficiency in the art.' " The Committee of Instruction eliminated the sewing course in 1843 after Sarah's graduation. Quaker needlework traditions with their early 1840s emphasis on friendship quilts undoubtedly influenced the fad for signature quilts. As a major Quaker academy Westtown School attracted Southern students whose parents valued Quaker or Friends culture over any North/South prejudices. So we can imagine that schoolmates from both sides of the Mason-Dixon line signed album blocks. Westtown in 1840. The school claims to be the oldest co-educational school still operating in the U.S. Westtown takes great pride in its over 200 year history, but the Quaker girls' school where Sarah taught was three years older. Founded by Anne Parrish (1760-1800) to give poor girls a proper education, she charged no tuition. Named for an educational goal, the Aimwell School was supported by contributions until it closed in 1923. Sarah's quilt might have been made as a going away gift by her Aimwell students or as an engagement celebration. She married Isaac Leeds of Moorestown, New Jersey on March 28, 1849 at Philadelphia's Twelfth Street Meeting. Twelfth Street Meeting House Block 4 by Becky Brown The Block Our fourth album block has remained popular as a signature pattern since the 1840s. Emily Vandergrift Snyder's Philadelphia quilt recorded the death of her husband and three of her children. See the whole quilt in the collection of the Los Angeles County Museum of Art here: http://www.lacma.org/eduprograms/EvesforEds/AmericanStories.pdf As #2413a & 2413b in BlockBase it has several published names. Names include Grandmother's Pride so I've called this month's pattern Quaker Pride because of its popularity with Quaker album quiltmakers. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 2 squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 4 small triangles. B—Cut 2 squares 5-1/4”. Cut each into 4 triangles with 2 cuts. You need 8 large triangles. C—Cut 13 squares 3-3/8”. Two blocks by Denniele Bohannon The Civil War & After Like several other young women followed here Sarah Powell Leeds did not live to see much of the Civil War. She died at 44 in July 1861, leaving five children three to ten years old. We can guess that she and a sixth child died at a time when almost 60 of every 1,000 births resulted in the mother's death. The red vertical line is British data for 1860. In 1990 the U.S. maternal death rate was 8.2 per 100,000; In 2007: 12.7 per 100,000. When Sarah died the rate was 6,000 per 100,000. Statistics were no better in 1889 when this spirit photo of a motherly ghost was published. + Pat Styring A little applique, a little fussy cutting. Again Sarah's quilt probably survived because she did not. Her children may have treasured it as a relic: "Sacred to Memory" to use an old-fashioned term. Sentiment for April For the Quakers a dove of peace Mark's second block in traditional color See the Aimwell School Quilt files here at the Quilt Index: http://www.quiltindex.org/~quilti/fulldisplay.php?kid=4A-7F-2DB And Lynda & Mary show several details of the blocks at Quaker Quilt History: http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/2012/11/anne-parrish-and-aimwell-school.html http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/2013/12/literacy-numeracy-and-useful-work.html Quilt dated 1851 in an ad from antique dealer Susan Parrish. Three of the blocks are this month's pattern. Westtown Reunion in the 1880s

Antebellum Album #2 Lend & Borrow by Pat Styring Emiline F. Cross attended Mount Holyoke Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, thirty miles from her home, graduating from the elite women's academy in 1854 when she was about twenty. She must have been well-liked as classmates made her a gift of an album quilt. Emiline's quilt from Massachusetts Quilts: Our Common Wealth. Collection of the Blandford, Massachusetts Historical Society The pattern was also popular. We'd call it Lady of the Lake or Lost Ship. The name Lend & Borrow refers to the way the red and white shapes shift from positive to negative spaces when it's set like this. Just like last month's block, it's not what we'd think of when we decide to piece a friendship quilt. But Emiline's generation, the first to adapt albums to patchwork, thought the block with two different triangles quite the thing for single pattern or sampler quilts. Quilt with blocks dated 1839-1843 from the Silber Family collection, possibly New Jersey. Blocks in this quilt dated 1839 are among the earliest surviving examples of friendship style blocks. Mount Holyoke about 1870. Over 300 pupils and teachers lived in the five-story building. Mary Lyon, 1797-1849 Like founder Mary Lyon, Mt. Holyoke Seminary became a pillar of New England's cultural temple so Southern girls were unlikely to enroll. Classroom and students about 1870 In a list of 307 students and teachers in Emiline's class of 1853-1854 the majority were from New England states with westerners from Pennsylvania and Indiana to Wisconsin. I counted only one woman who might be considered a Southerner in the class of 1853-54. (Two others were from St. Louis and Washington City, cities with Southern roots that remained in the Union.) Sarah Jane Foster traveled from Jonesborough, Tennessee to South Hadley, Massachusetts for school. Most of her fellow pupils were from the green Union states here. Sarah Jane's interest in Mt. Holyoke might have been due to dreams of becoming a missionary. Alumni records indicate she married a widowed missionary in 1860, taught in Oroomiah, Persia and returned to Tennessee in 1869 after his death. Same classroom, same day Why did New Jersey's St. Mary's Seminary attract Virginians like Indiana Fletcher while Mt. Holyoke enrolled more girls from the South Pacific than the southern states? It was probably both curriculum and culture. Mt. Holyoke's classes were more academic than schools aiming to turn out cultured wives: Latin and logic, history, philosophy, algebra, music, science and calisthenics followed by examinations described as "severe" by Emily Dickinson. A Mount Holyoke graduate might become a teacher, spreading Miss Lyons's ideals to the next generation. The Library Mt. Holyoke's values were embedded in New England's culture of independence, self reliance, reform and improvement. Rather than being waited upon, students shared housekeeping chores. Mary Lyon not only hoped to create devout Christians of her pupils, she also encouraged them to "Attempt great things, accomplish great things." Southern parents would not be pleased to find their daughters returned as unmarriageable blue stockings and reformers. Olympia Brown was in Emiline's class. She may have decided Mt. Holyoke wasn't radical enough as she transferred to Antioch College and later attended theological school, ordained as a minister in 1863. This pair is thought to be friends Emily Dickinson and Kate Turner. Emily Dickinson attended Mt. Holyoke for the 1847-1848 term. Some speculate the religious focus was too much for the poet. While Mary Lyons ruled religious temperament was graded: students who professed, those who hoped to, and girls without hope. Emily remained in the last group. How many other Mt. Holyoke students received an album quilt from friends? Emiline's, well documented by Lynne Z. Bassett for the Massachusetts project, is one of two in the literature right now. This block from missionary Mary Matthews's 1888 album would have warmed Miss Lyons's heart. See the quilt here: https://ascdc.mtholyoke.edu/exhibits/show/marymatthews/quilt "Sharer in all the joys and sorrows of Holyoke life, Lizzie Hanmer, Wethersfield, Conn." The Block Denniele Bohannon's blue and white version Students at the Friends' Institute in New York City made a similar friendship quilt for teacher Patience Smith in 1852 with many names in the appliqued border. See more about this quilt: http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/12/patience-smith-sacred-to-memory.html One of the many variations of the pattern shown as a block about 1890 by the Ladies' Art Company, which called it Lady of the Lake In repeat block versions the large half-square-triangle is the block, the smaller triangles form the sashing. ROTARY CUTTING A 12” BLOCK A—Cut 6 dark & 6 light squares 3-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally into 2 triangles. You need 12 light and 12 dark triangles. B—Cut 1 dark & 1 light square 6-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally into 2 triangles. You need 1 light and 1 dark triangle. SEWING By Mark Lauer Album quilt date-inscribed 1842-43. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. https://collections.lacma.org/node/170294 Another early version in red and white. The Civil War and After Here her name is spelled Emeline Tracking Emiline Cross into the Civil War years reveals she married Edward Lay Tinker, about 15 years older than she in 1856. She died in 1863 leaving two boys---a five-year-old and a baby. Emiline's quilt might have survived only because she did not. It's now in the Blandford Historical Society, the town where she was born. Emiline's Tennessee classmate Sarah Jane Foster's Civil War was fought far away in Persia. She married widowed missionary Samuel Audley Rhea in Jonesborough May, 1860. By July she was on a boat from Boston to Kurdistan. Sarah Foster Rhea in the middle east. She spent the years 1860-1865 with the Kurdish people. You can read her adventures in her husband's biography The Tennessean in Persia & Koordistan. https://books.google.com/books?id=QUM4MpsulqkC&dq=samuel+audley+rhea&source=gbs_navlinks_s By Mark Lauer Sentiment for February Inked sentiment from an 1854 quilt. We tend to be perfectionists but many of these inked blocks were not skillfully drawn. That's called charm. And if you blot the ink---make it part of the design. The eagle in the inking Read Lynne Z. Bassett's essay on Emiline Cross's quilt here: http://www.massquilts.org/Docs/MHC_Essay.pdf Denniele's pink version Dated 1851 A colorful sampler album belonging to the Stratford [Connecticut] Historical Society includes several versions of this month's block. From the Connecticut Project & the Quilt Index. Lend & Borrow by Becky Brown Post pictures of your blocks in our Facebook group. Ask to join and I'll let you in---or just lurk to watch the fun. Bookmark this link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/799666626885682/ The photos of Mount Holyoke are from this site: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~dalbino/photos/stereos.html

Antebellum Album #7 Chimney Sweep by Becky Brown Southerners anxious to establish schools in the antebellum years had difficulty finding qualified teachers, so they were motivated to offer handsome salaries to well-educated Northerners who agreed to emigrate. Caroline Matilda Seabury, a single 27-year-old with a good New England education, accepted a position teaching French at the Columbus Female Institute in northeastern Mississippi. Caroline Russell Seabury (1827 -1893) Brooklyn, New York to Columbus, Mississippi Caroline had been living with her few surviving relatives, sister Martha and brother Channing, in their uncle's Brooklyn home. The family was prosperous (Uncle Edwin was a dry goods wholesaler) but cursed by tuberculosis. After Mary's father and most of her siblings died of the disease her despairing mother Caroline Plimpton Seabury committed suicide. Caroline left Brooklyn in fall, 1854 seeking an independent life, a difficult step. Columbus Female Institute about 1880 when it became a woman's college "O, the loneliness of that great half furnished place, it overpowered us both. Miss S. who had just left school & for the first time tried a life among strangers---far from home---I with no home felt----both of us utterly heartsick." Sister Martha joined her but Martha was ill too and would soon die. Caroline made friends in Columbus, earning local minor celebrity for her brave care of a young small pox victim in 1857. She maintained ties with some of those friends over her lifetime. Chimney Sweep by Mark Lauer The Block Chimney Sweep Variations on this block must be the most popular friendship pattern. Quilt dated 1852. "The Quilt of Friendship" "The quilt of Freenbship" Mrs. Cowperthwaite wasn't much of a speller but we are glad she tried. You can construct the block in many ways. BlockBase #3266 is easy to cut and piece in diagonal strips. Cutting a 12" Block A- Cut 2 squares 2-3/8". Cut each in half with one diagonal cut. You need 4 small triangles. B- Cut 3 squares. 4-1/4". Cut each into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 12 triangles. C- Cut 6 rectangles 4-3/4" X 2-5/8". D- Cut 3 rectangles 6-7/8" X 2-5/8". E- Cut 4 squares 2-5/8"--- 2 light/2 dark. Chimney Sweep by Denniele Bohannon A Sentiment for July You have a little more room in this block so here's an extravagant flourish---perhaps a music book. Chimney Sweep by Pat Styring During the War & After When Civil War came Caroline stayed at her position in Columbus, ambivalent as to where she belonged. "When will this agony be over?—From the hour when I first saw the Confederate flag flying to this evening there has been a conflict of feeling—personal attachments struggling against inborn principles." She'd made friends in Mississippi; she was dependent on her salary; her sister was buried there. To some degree she'd become a Southerner but never a secessionist. Through her war years she always saw the folly of the Confederate cause and the fallacies in Confederate propaganda, ideas she could confide only to her diary. In 1862 the Vermont-born principal, wary of Northern-born teachers, fired her. She found work tutoring the daughters of George Hampton Young at Waverley Plantation, seven miles from town on the Tombigbee River. Mid-20th century photo of Waverley's Plantation House built in 1852. "My home is pleasant with two little girls to teach---plenty of time for sewing, reading, walking or riding---a great deal too much for thinking..." A year later: "This summer time hangs heavily on my hands...with nothing to sew, because there is no material to be had...Even after learning to twist on a 'great [spinning] wheel' there is nothing left to twist...I have been reduced to the last semblance of occupation---patch-work---in company with my friends here---a last resort in the hour of extremity." Chimney Sweep by Mark Lauer She yearned to go North but could not get a pass to legally cross the lines. In late July, 1863 after the fall of Vicksburg, friends arranged an "opportunity," an undercover wagon ride northwest across the state to Union-held Mississippi River banks with four men, four mules and some cattle. Edwin Forbes's drawing of a four-mule team with an African-American driver, similar to the wagon that took Caroline northwest across Mississippi. Her driver was named Jack. Library of Congress. Caroline's account of the two-week trip through ravaged Mississippi is a classic adventure tale. Her saviors deposited her on Buck Island on the Arkansas side of the river where she feared remaining "a prisoner condemned without a trial." How to catch the attention of the Union army? "A thought came to me---that in my trunk were some pieces of red white & blue silk---remnants of a Union flag....I made as large a flag as I could with them, cut paper stars out of a blank leaf in my note-book---and soon had a Star spangld---though small-sized--national emblem---With a cotton-wood stick for staff, it was tied on---the stars down---in token of distress." Mississippi river steamboat with paroled prisoners aboard, 1865 She waved her flag at a passing boat carrying Union troops from Vicksburg. They stopped and picked her up. She made it to Cincinnati and then back to New York. Channing Seabury's late-19th-century house in St. Paul Caroline's life is known through her diary and her post-war letters, which were included with the papers of her brother Channing, a gilded-age success in St. Paul, Minnesota. The Seabury papers were donated by Channing's wife to the Minnesota Historical Society. Channing Seabury taking the first shovel of dirt at the ground- breaking ceremony for the new Minnesota capitol in 1896. Photo from the Minnesota Historical Society Caroline died in Washington D.C. in 1893 and is buried with her brother and his wife in St. Paul. The Diary of Caroline Seabury, 1854–1863, edited by Suzanne L. Bunkers is still available from the University of Wisconsin Press. See more here: https://uwpress.wisc.edu/books/0283.htm Sarah Elizabeth McKinley's flourish on the 1852 quilt of friendship above Turkey red and white sampler from French72 Antiques with five examples of this month's album block One happy ending in Caroline's story: Waverley's resurrection. It's been restored to its antebellum glory. Here is where she was reduced to "the last semblance of occupation---patch-work." Chimney Sweep by Denniele Bohannon

Block # 6 Madame's Star By Pat Styring Southern girls educated at Northern boarding schools risked "imbibing habits and manners not perfectly congenial with those of the people of the South," warned an Alabama parent. Cautious planters and urban aristocrats had the option of pricey schools closer to home. Among the elite academies was Madame Talvande's French School for Young Ladies, L'École pour Demoiselles, in Charleston, South Carolina, run by a family of Haitian refugees. Madame Talvande's school building still stands, known today as the Sword Gate House. Mary Boykin Miller (1823-1886) soon after her marriage to James Chesnut in 1840. Mary Miller, a student in the late 1830s, recalled Madame as,"the Tyrant of Legare St." who was forced to seek U.S. asylum by revolution in Haiti, then called St. Domingue. The Haitian uprising (1791-1804) was the most successful of the slave revolutions, creating the second independent country in the Western hemisphere. "She wasted no time in vain regrets, or in thoughts of what was due her by God and man---on account of her social position---before the social earthquake; but she at once took measures to utilize her rare accomplishments, and to make them pay." Madame's accomplishments: She was a native French speaker and a force to be reckoned with. The Eastern U.S. was dotted with what were called French Schools run by exiles from Europe and the Caribbean with just those gifts. Unknown school. Class picture with Madame? About 1860 Mary was a favorite student, invited to sit at Madame's table during meals, conversing skillfully in the required French. (English was forbidden.) Classmate Susan Petigru was not so favored. Sue did not thrive in French and believed that girls in her elite position wasted time and tuition on education. Block # 6 Madame's Star By Denniele Bohannon Sue and Mary had much in common besides social class. Both were gifted writers and conversationalists, witty and outspoken. But Mary knew the limits for Southern womanhood. Sue never accepted the conventions, earning a lifelong reputation as a "fast woman." Sue published popular novels pushing those limits in the 1850s. Mary Boykin Miller Chesnut wrote novels too, but she's remembered for her Civil War diary, while Sue Petigru King is forgotten except by those who relish a scandalous life story. Older sister Caroline Petigru Carson (1820–1892) enjoyed her years at Madame Talvande's more than Sue did. The 1841 portrait is by Thomas Sully, Collection: Gibbes Museum of Art Chintz album quilt. Signatures from Columbia, Charleston, Savannah, Danbury, Connecticut & New York sold at Skinner's Auctions. Quilt dated 1848, Eudora F. Davis, Sumter District, South Carolina. Online auction. Other names include Clark. Finding antebellum South Carolina album quilts with pieced blocks is almost as hard as finding Yankee pupils in Carolina girls' schools. Cut-out-chintz applique is the dominant style in pre-Civil-War South Carolina signature quilts but here are some familiar pieced designs. (We are not going to do the pale blue sunburst!) Madame Talvande's "had two or three distinct cliques," wrote Mary in a thinly veiled novel about school days. She classified herself (and probably Sue) as among the English girls---those "of Cavalier stock" (meaning descended from English aristocrats). There were "The French speaking [Catholic] refugees from St. Domingo of whom Madame was a distinguished representative. wonderfully handsome girls... gayer and less studious than Charleston proper...." Then the "Huguenots...not ashamed then to be both American and protestants." She lists their traits: piety, thrift, industry, energy and worldly wisdom, "stiff necked, with somewhat of a hard narrowness." The always observant Mary could bite. Mary's parents removed her from Madame Talvande's after gossip she was seen walking with James Chesnut, six years older. James and Mary married when she was 17. He was a clerk in Sue's father's law office. Once the Millers met Mary's callers in frontier Mississippi, a temporary home, they sent her right back to Charleston. Sue's stay at Madame Talvande's was short. Hoping perhaps for more polish, her parents enrolled her in a French School in Philadelphia, which she didn't like any better than she did Philadelphia or the North. Mix of chintz and calico styles in an album dated 1843 from the Philadelphia/NJ area, made by Hannah Nicholson Grave's Quaker relatives. Collection of the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History See a post on Hannah Grave's three quilts here: https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2018/05/hannah-nicholson-grave-quilts.html Links between Carolina students and Philadelphia schools seems to have been one agent of design transmission. Girls like Sue (if Sue noticed needlework at all) would have brought new Philadelphia fashion back home. The Block: Madame's Star Block # 6 Madame's Star By Mark Lauer Blocks from an undated mid-19th century New Jersey album from Stella Rubin Antiques Simple nine patch stars often served as signature blocks. This month's design gives different effects with different shading. On the reverse of an 1843 quilt from Swedesboro, New Jersey in Mary Koval's collection. It's #1634 in BlockBase, published in the 1930s by Nancy Page as Mosaic. Block # 6 Madame's Star By Mark Lauer Cutting a 12" Block A - Cut 2 dark & 2 light squares 4-7/8" Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 8 large triangles. B - Cut 1 light, 1 dark & 2 medium squares 5-1/4". Cut each into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 16 medium-sized triangles. C- Cut 2 squares 2-7/8" Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 4 small triangles. D - Cut 1 square 3-3/8". Sewing Block # 6 Madame's Star By Denniele Bohannon A Sentiment for June A scroll with a bouquet from a set of blocks dated 1843 in the Philadelphia Museum of Art The Civil War & After Mary and Sue kept up an edgy relationship through the Civil War. Through her husband Mary was Confederate elite. Sue married Henry King, a Charleston lawyer who was neither ambitious nor sober. By the time the War came and Henry joined the Sumter Guard they were living apart. Henry was killed in the Battle of Secessionville in June, 1862. Susan Dupont Petigru King Bowen (1824 - 1875) perhaps about 1870 Sue's Southern family was outspoken against Secession. During the War sister Caroline found that Charlestonians thought so little of her opinions she was obliged to obtain a pass to move to New York and then Italy. Sue remained in Charleston and Columbia, suspected of spying, treason and hiding Yankee fugitives and growing more rebellious and combative as the years passed. The former classmates met at Columbia's 1862 Gunboat Fair. In her diary Mary noted Sue's escort, an infatuated soldier 12 years her junior, and called her "fast." "People talk of her flirtations and keep out of her way because she is so quarrelsome." Two years later Mary had the nerve to accuse Sue to her face of dressing provocatively in search of a new husband. "And yet I am as afraid of her as death." In January, 1865 Sue was talking of her engagement to Confederate General Pierre Toutant Beauregard. Mary was indignant. "She showed his letters and his photograph. Incredulous we were and openly pronounced the photograph proof worth nothing. Anybody can get that for a small pile of Confederate money. It is in every shop window." Paper photos like this carte-de-visite of P.T. Beauregard were collectibles, apparently advertised in "every shop window" in Columbia right up to the end of the War. Sue was perhaps delusional as well as bad-tempered. Well, I could go on as it's so much fun to read Mary Chesnut's diary. She is a 21st-century woman in a 19th century-milieu. Block # 6 Madame's Star By Becky Brown Read previews of recent editions of both Mary's and Sue's novels. Sue enjoyed financial success with several of her books in the 1850s. See Busy Moments of an Idle Woman (1853) and Lily: A Novel (1855). Gerald Gray's Wife and Lily: A Novel have recently been republished. Here's a preview: https://books.google.com/books?id=yvFC913xm50C&pg=PR17&dq=sue+king+lily+a+novel&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjch97B8sDWAhVJjFQKHf1CCOwQ6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=sue%20king%20lily%20a%20novel&f=false Mary Chesnut's novel Two Years or the Way We Lived Then was not published till recently. https://books.google.com/books?id=uhVbWa-kA7oC&pg=PR9&dq=mary+chesnut+two+years+or+the+way+we+lived+then&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwiQtZ7N8MDWAhXqlFQKHeVlDBsQ6wEIKTAA#v=onepage&q=mary%20chesnut%20two%20years%20or%20the%20way%20we%20lived%20then&f=false The introductions are the best part.

Block # 1 Wandering Lover by Becky Brown The first block in our 2018 series Antebellum Album features Indiana Fletcher whose family tells us much about cross border relationships North and South before the Civil War. Unknown class and teacher Throughout the year we'll explore women's academies and signature quilts in the 1840s and '50s. We'll look at school girls whose lives were interrupted by the American Civil War and examine album quilts. Each month I'll post a free pattern for a favorite signature block from those early friendship quilts. Indiana Fletcher 1828-1900 Indiana Fletcher was a woman whose ties to North and South were tightened during her school years. Born in 1828, Indiana's unusual name celebrated her Uncle Calvin's new home on the western frontier. Calvin and Elijah Fletcher were Vermonters who refused to stay put. Seeking opportunity far from his parents' New England farm, Indiana's father Elijah wound up as a Yankee school teacher near Lynchburg, Virginia. He married well-to-do student Maria Antoinette Crawford and in short time became a Southerner--- a slave holder at his Sweet Briar plantation. Indie and sister Betty benefited from their mother's family money and father's faith in education---"the best fortune we can give our children." Indiana traveled north to St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, New Jersey and the class of 1843. Indie attended school across the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania southwest of Burlington New Jersey, the star at the top. Sweet Briar is the lower star. The Episcopal school overlooking the Delaware River was five years old. St Mary's was later named Doane Academy after founder George Washington Doane, who believed girls' curricula should be the same as boys'. He and wife Eliza built Riverside, an Italianate mansion next to the school, with Eliza's money from her first husband. Eliza also used that inheritance to support the school in the early years while it became established as a women's academy with a national reputation. Doane Academy still provides an education for young men and women. The Doane's home, Riverside. St. Mary's influenced Indiana in many ways. Perhaps the most concrete was the makeover she and Betty planned for their Virginia family home, improving the brick farmhouse with a tower on either side, ala Riverside. Father Elijah wrote, "This is a project of my Daughters, and as I rarely deny to gratify any of their desires, have consented this." Remodeling also dictated travels to New York City to buy furniture and keep in touch with friends made in school. Sweet Briar in Virginia in the early 20th century. One can see the bones of a Southern plantation between the towers. Burlington, New Jersey was not only home to important 19th-century boarding schools but also to some of the earliest album quilts. We have no evidence that Indie Fletcher ever contributed to a quilt but as a fashionable young woman in Burlington she must have been aware of the new fad for patchwork albums. Our first signature block---just like Indie---has links to Indiana and New Jersey. The Block Block 1 by Mark Lauer We have four modelmakers this year and two of them are making two sets so you're going to get lots of ideas. Mark's doing one traditional red, yellow & green set. 1843 Signature quilt from Burlington, New Jersey Collection of Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CPQuilts/id/229 A nine-patch variation is not something we might pick for an album block but in the antebellum years that white center square was seen as the perfect spot for a name and sentiment. No applique in this block of the month! But you might get ideas. Those buds stitched in the corners are pretty cute. I've seen two albums dated 1842 and 1843 with the pictured pattern---both from New Jersey and both attributed to Quakers. The quilt directly above with sashing is the cover quilt on the New Jersey Quilts book. Variations were common for albums from the complex version above to a simpler version below. Online Auction. Quilt looks to be about 1880-1910. The pattern is BlockBase #1700 I've picked a pattern of medium complexity: #1700 in BlockBase. (#1702 is for the ambitious---54 small HST's per block.) Late 19th-century version of #1702 The oldest published name I've found is Wandering Lover, published in Hearth & Home magazine in 1895, an appropriate name for Southerner Indie and a certain New York minister, two people divided by Civil War. Mark's second set is done in the bright and black repros we call neon prints today---black novelty prints from about 1910. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 3 background squares 4-7/8” Cut each in half diagonally. You need six large triangles. B— Cut 9 dark and 3 light squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 18 dark and 6 light of the smaller triangles. C--- Cut 3 squares 4-1/2”. Block 1 by Pat Styring Pat is doing her distinctive collage-like interpretation: a little applique, a lot of fussy-cutting. The Civil War & After Indiana Fletcher Williams, perhaps in the 1880s. When Civil War broke out Indie was a rich single woman, a 33-year-old slave-holder living on the family plantation. Her personal war was less painful than that of many Virginians. Sweet Briar remained safe from fighting so many of her trials were just tribulations. The railroads no longer ran; food and goods were scarce. And she missed her Northern travels. Pass for travel in Virginia right after the War. Indie applied for a pass to cross into the Union from Virginia. In 1864 she asked Uncle Calvin to recommend her, hoping to escape the South where "fortunes are vanishing like the glories of the setting sun." Calvin Fletcher refused to vouch for her loyalty, fearing she'd try to get her hands on the Vermont family farm, but I would guess Indiana's motivation to cross the lines was more romance than greed. James Henry Williams Frustrated travel plans may have included a visit to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where J.H. Williams was an Episcopal minister. Once the war ended Williams visited Sweet Briar and married Indie soon after. Daughter Maria Georgiana (Daisy) was born in 1867. The Fletchers' fortune did not vanish with the Confederacy's setting sun and she and Williams continued to prosper throughout the century, dividing their time between New York and Virginia, while Daisy attended Manhattan schools. Daisy Williams (1867 -1884) Sadly, their only child inherited a debilitating disease and died at the age of 16. Her broken-hearted parents moved permanently to New York. In 1889 when J.H. Williams died his will requested Indiana use their fortune and Virginia land to establish a women's school in Daisy's memory. You may be familiar with Sweet Briar, a private women's liberal arts college on 3,000 acres near Lynchburg. Sweet Briar College in 1914, fourteen years after Indiana Fletcher Williams's death. Indie's mansion still stands Sweet Briar College was recently named a top ten small school in Forbes' Magazines survey. Denniele Bohannon is also doing two sets in high contrast brights. This is from her pink set. And this one with more triangles is from her blue set. BlockBase #1701. Sentiment for July Each month I'll show an inked flourish from a mid-century album. You might want to print it and trace it. Or try some free-hand grape vines with your signature. Information about the Fletcher/Williams family is abundant. I first read Indie's tale in a group biography of her father's family. Our Family Dreams is by Daniel Blake Smith. Album sold at Hindman Auctions about 15 years ago with a variation of this month's block on the top row next to the willow tree. If you'd prefer you can buy the patterns for Antebellum Album in my Etsy shop. I've packaged blocks 1-4, which you can buy as a PDF to print yourself for $5. Or I'll print it on my black & white printer and mail it to you for $9. You'll be getting patterns January through April ahead of everyone else so don't be telling anybody. Here are the links: https://www.etsy.com/listing/589746451/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4? https://www.etsy.com/listing/575941078/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4?

Block # 11 Ever Widening Circle by Pat Styring In 1819 Emma Willard encouraged Connecticut-born Julia Pierrepont (also spelled Pierpont) to accept a position at a new female academy in Sparta, Georgia. Twenty-six-year-old Julia is usually described as one of Willard's pupils but only six years separated them so they may have been fellow teachers; it seems certain they were close friends. When Julia asked Emma to sign the first page of her autograph album Emma enclosed a note celebrating their--- "League of friendship. This is not marriage but it is something like it. Mutually to love, to trust, to rejoice, and mourn together---such is the relation which subsists between Julia Pierpont Werne and Emma Willard." More than an educated young woman, Julia was a missionary "in the cause of women's education," according to Anne Firor Scott who has studied Willard's influence, characterizing it as an "Ever Widening Circle." Emma Hart Willard (1787-1870) taught in several schools, the most famous being her Troy Seminary in New York. Student Elizabeth Cady Stanton recalled "a splendid looking woman...my idea for a queen....She was always robed---one must use the word 'robed' so majestic was her bearing---in rich black silk or satin, and her head was crowned with a large white mull turban." Friend Julia married Richard Henry Warne of Mayfield, New York in 1820 or 1822 and returned to Vermont. "Henry Warne Infant Child of RH & Julia Pierrepont Warne" The baby's tombstone with its weeping willow is near his father's in Manchester, Vermont. Their only child Henry died as an infant and Richard, only 28, followed in 1824. Julia seems to have gone back to Sparta, a prosperous cotton producing town. Mid-century school in Sparta, Georgia. Cotton made Sparta and cotton's demise killed it. The town is full of 19th-century buildings reflecting those ups and downs. In 1832 she accepted an offer from Elias Marks of Columbia, South Carolina. Dr. Marks, a physician, was almost as dedicated to educational innovations as Emma Willard. His medical degree was from New York but he was born in Charleston of Jewish immigrants from London. 1850 Lithograph by Eugene Dovilliers South Carolina College for men made Columbia the state's educational center. His first school in Columbia was begun with wife Jane Barham Marks but after her death giving birth to their fourth child in 1827 he closed the school and opened another north of town in the sand hills, a healthier location he hoped. He called the acreage Barhamville after Jane's family. Barhamville school, painted about 1860 by Eugene Dovilliers, the obligatory French-born faculty member. Julia became head mistress at Barhamville and converted Elias Marks to Emma Willard's educational philosophies and curriculum. She married Dr. Marx in 1832. The South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute attracted wealthy families from nearby states, including Georgian Mittie Bulloch Roosevelt (see block # 9) and John Calhoun's daughter Anna Maria. The curriculum was more academic than ornamental. Mary Kelley in her history of women's education called it one "of antebellum America's leading schools." The Markses educated 4,000 students over 32 years. Could that be Julia P. Marks leading students in a promenade in Dovilliers's painting? Julia gave birth to several children but only Edwina and Edward lived to adulthood. Edward, a student at Harvard in 1861, returned to Columbia with the war. Anna Maria Calhoun Clemson (1817-1885) founded Clemson University, another link in the Willard educational network. Some of the places Julia lived from Vermont to Georgia The Block Ever Widening Circle by Mark Lauer Recall Emma Willard's ever-widening circle of educators with a block of ever-widening squares. . Massachusetts album dated 1854 - 55 from Forsyth's Auctions This square in a square design made an excellent friendship block, leaving room for lengthy sentiments. Our block goes around the square three times, but variations increase the complexity. The pattern is BlockBase #2376, called Hour Glass by the Ladies Art Company around 1890. Just three ever-widening squares... Denniele Bohannon kept going. Our pattern stops at three. Cutting a 12" Finished Block A - Cut 2 squares 6-7/8". Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 4 triangles. B - Cut 1 square 7-1/4". Cut into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 4 triangles. C - Cut 1 square 6-1/2". Sewing Ever Widening Circle by Mark Lauer A Sentiment for November A classic laurel wreath with the date 1854 featured During the War & After "Mrs. A.B. Kinsler Columbia SC" Detail of a block from a set dated 1861. Charleston Museum of Art Elias and Julia Marks kept their school open as war descended but gave its supervision over to two French Mesdames, Acelie Togno, who moved her school from Charleston, which was under Union bombardment, and later Sophie Sosnowski. Samuela and Hattie Palmer spent some of their war years boarding at Barhamville. In April, 1861 Dr. Marks gave the girls permission to send off the first trainload of soldiers with waving and shouting. Elias Marks wrote a song at the beginning of the war Chicora "dedicated to the patriotic ladies of the Southern Confederated States" with a small sketch of Barhamville. Much of Columbia burned during Sherman's occupation in 1864. The school remained untouched due to Dr. Marks's firefighting efforts. Photo by George N. Barnard Eight months after the war Ann Beaufort Sims heard from Edwina Marks that her parents were "very destitute." "Barhamville, tis true, has not burnt, but at present they have no income at all....Dr. M. is too infirm to think of opening B. as a school again....Both Dr. and Mrs. M. look very badly. They seemed very glad to see me and I think it affords them real pleasure to receive visits from their old pupils." Two years later Beaufort's sister Leora wrote that the Markses were boarding with her family while everyone hoped that the giant school building, a white elephant, might be sold. "I do hope they will carry out the plan so these old people can have something to live on..." Nothing came of the plan. The Marks family moved to Washington City where Edwina supported her family with a clerical job. Julia died there in 1878 and Dr. Marks died in 1886 at 95 years of age. The abandoned South Carolina Female Collegiate Institute burned in 1869. Two by Becky Brown Ever Widening Two variations of a square inside a square block in an album documented in the Connecticut project. http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=47-7B-746 More to Read: Anne Fiore Scott "The Ever Widening Circle: The Diffusion of Feminist Values from the Troy Female Seminary, 1822-1872," History of Education Quarterly, XXIX (1979)

From the Massachusetts project & the Quilt Index Each month I post an antique sampler or two with the monthly block. From an online auction in 2002 I chose the twelve blocks in this years B.O.M. from my files of pictures of signature sampler quilts with pieced blocks. From the Oxford Female Academy in Chester County, Pennsylvania, Collection of the Chester County Historical Society I have a lot larger file of antebellum albums that are predominantly appliqued---but pieced is the theme. I picked twelve pieced blocks that I saw with some frequency, ignoring the quirky blocks that seem one of a kind. Quilt from the Robbins family dated 1842-1843, Gloucester County, New Jersey project & the Quilt Index. Although quirky blocks would be a great topic for a B.O.M. Quilt for Sophia Blake Sawyer, Collection of Historic New England No spirals, ever! I didn't choose popular blocks that required show-off piecing either. Quilt from the Sykes family, New Jersey, DAR Museum http://www.quiltindex.org/basicdisplay.php?kid=46-7A-FC Although show-off piecing would also be a good B.O.M Tried to keep the set-in seams (Y-seams) to a minimum. From the Massachusetts project & the Quilt Index A B.O.M. with all Y-seam blocks might be good for personal growth but probably not going to have a lot of stitchers quilting along. For George Washington Reed, 1846, Luzerne County, Pennsylvania from a Bonham's auction Section of a quilt shown in the Baltimore Sun from their morgue. So be aware I am looking out for you in choosing the twelve blocks. Requirements: 1) Popular in pieced samplers. 2) Not so hard that there is crying involved. (either for me in drawing the pattern or you in piecing the block)

Antebellum Album #10 Carolina Lily by Becky Brown We're familiar with many variations of the Carolina Lily as a repeat block. It's surprising to me, though, how many needlewomen thought it a good fit for a sampler album quilt. Caroline Drakel of Hunterdon County, New Jersey included several versions. The Carolinas were home to many girl's academies. Among the best documented: the Burwell School in Hillsborough, North Carolina. Sketch of the Burwell School from memory Margaret Anna Robertson Burwell (1810 - 1871), perhaps about 1865. Anna Burwell ran the school for twenty years before the Civil War and raised ten of her own children while husband Robert was minister at the local Presbyterian Church. His salary was small and the school helped them make ends meet. Like the Burwell school, Kentucky's Bardstown School attracted a small group of local girls plus a few Southern boarders. The very full skirts date this photo to about 1860. Anna's alumnae include about 200 girls over the two decades. I found mention of only one from north of Virginia. Block from a friendship quilt made for Fanny Holt's sister. Fabrics and style (log cabin of shirting prints) indicate a date after 1880. Alamance County Historical Society Collection. Frances Ann Holt of North Carolina's wealthy Holt textile family spent her twelfth year there in 1849. Bess Beatty in her book on the Holt Family outlined the curriculum: "Academics in the morning, Ornamentals ---notably music, painting, and needlework----in the afternoon." Tulip quilt 1850-1875. Fanny Holt's sister-in-law Elizabeth Ann Mebane Holt (1830-1895) was quite a quiltmaker. The North Carolina project documented her quilts and included this one in their book North Carolina Quilts. The school attracted boarders and day pupils from the area with a few from Virginia, South Carolina and Florida. Miss Anna "claimed that her intention was 'to teach the young Ladies to 'think'," writes Beatty, "but apparently she did not intend that they think much about challenging their ascribed sphere." Girls should aspire to "a meek & quiet spirit." And here we have the major contrast between a typical New England academy like Mary Lyon's Mount Holyoke (see Block #2) and the more common small school of the era emphasizing ornamental subjects. Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley (Keckly) (1818-1907) About 1860 Moorland-Spingham Research Center, Howard University. There was at least one young woman at the Burwell School who refused to accept her proper sphere. When the Burwells came to North Carolina from Virginia in 1835 they brought a 17-year-old slave. Elizabeth Hobbs was born in 1818 to Agnes, an enslaved seamstress in Robert Burwell's family. Elizabeth's biological father was Armistead Burwell (1777-1841) patriarch at Dinwiddie Courthouse plantation with over fifty slaves, Agnes's husband was George Pleasant Hobbs, slave on a nearby plantation, eventually taken west---"gone forever," Elizabeth said in her memoir. She thought enough of her lost stepfather to name her own son George. Elizabeth recalled her seven years at Burwell as life's low point. She did the work of three servants, she remembered, caring for the student's clothes, cleaning their rooms and sewing. But that was not the worst. Anna Burwell reacted to her independence and "stubborn pride" by commissioning a schoolmaster to strip her and beat her---weekly. Elizabeth's had the last word about Anna Burwell and her portrait is not pretty: The minister "was burdened with a helpless wife, a girl that he had married in the humble walks of life. She was morbidly sensitive, and imagined that I regarded her with contemptuous feelings because she was of poor parentage." Burwell School before restoration Violent beatings were still not the most horrible memories: "For four years a white-man...had base designs upon me. I do not care to dwell upon this subject, for it is one that is fraught with pain. Suffice it to say, that he persecuted me for four years, and I-I- became a mother." Elizabeth did not reveal her rapist's name but son George William Kirkland's father was neighbor Alexander J. Kirkland who died 18 months after the birth with symptoms of liver failure from alcohol abuse. He was 33. Alexander Kirkland's tombstone eulogizes him as "a dutiful son, a tender husband, a fond father, a loyal friend, an honest man, a Christian gentleman." Elizabeth Keckley's story of Anna Burwell is at odds with community memory of the school mistress. But once again Elizabeth had the last word. 2018 is the 200th anniversary of her birth and the Burwell School does itself proud by celebrating her life all year in the Keckley Bicentennial. Carolina Lily by Mark Lauer It is hard for us to make sense of the relationships between the Burwells, the Kirklands and the Hobbses. We see monumental cruelty and hypocrisy but they saw society differently. We might recall at least three "dogmas of the proper sphere." 1) People believed in a natural law, an order of hierarchy in a Christian world. One's earthly job was to accept one's place in the social ladder. Nobility lorded it over the gentry, gentry over the workman, the workman over his wife, the white man over the darker, the master over the slave. Elizabeth and people like Mary Lyon of the Holyoke School hoped for a modern perspective and did what they could to change things. Anna Burwell believed it her religious duty to discourage change. Read more about the ladder at this post I wrote a few years ago in considering women's rights: http://grandmotherschoice.blogspot.com/2013/05/39-endless-stairs-rank-and-rights.html 2) Enslaved African-Americans had "No Rights Which the White Man was Bound to Respect," according to a 1857 Supreme Court Decision. Although Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley had bought her freedom by 1857, the Court concisely phrased the stark reason why Alexander Kirkland was viewed as "an honest man" and she was vilified for accusing him in her memoirs. 3) And, of course, we are all too familiar today with what can happen when any woman of any class accuses a man of sexual abuse. The Burwell School on its two acres is a historic site. See more here: http://www.burwellschool.org/ The Block Carolina Lily by Mark Lauer Dozens of variations of the triple-floral have been published and stitched since the 1840s. You might want to do a traditional block in this 12" format. But I said NO APPLIQUE. So we are sewing the simple variation at top left above: BlockBase #765.01: Tulip attributed to the Alice Brooks/Laura Wheeler syndicate in the 1930s. Cutting a 12" Block See the templates for D & E below. A - Cut 1 square 4-1/4". Cut diagonally into 2 triangles. B- Cut 1 square 6-3/8". Cut into 4 triangles with 2 diagonal cuts. You need 2 triangles. C- Cut 1 square 3-7/8". D- Cut 4 rectangles 2-7/8" wide by 7-3/8" long and trim these at 45 degree angles into diamonds as shown. You need 4 diamonds. E- Cut 2 rectangles 3-7/8" wide by 13-1/4" long. trim these at 45 degree angles into the leaf shapes as shown.You need 2 leaves. F - Cut 1 square 6". Cut diagonally into 2 triangles. You need 1. Cutting D Becky explains it best: A Sentiment for October Wreath from a quilt dated 1847 3" for piece C. During the War & After Carolina Lily by Pat Styring Following these women from the Burwell School into the Civil War only reveals more grief. Elizabeth lost son George at the Battle of Wilson's Creek in Missouri; Frances Holt's first husband was killed in 1863 and two of Anna Burwell's sons died during the war. Mrs. Keckley & Mrs. Lincoln in Steven Spielberg's film “Lincoln:” Gloria Reuben & Sally Field. Elizabeth's memoir told us much about the Lincolns' relationship. Elizabeth Keckley became Mary Lincoln's dressmaker and perhaps the historical character of the twenty-teens. Read her memoir: Behind the Scenes, or, Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House https://books.google.com/books?id=0UsIAAAAQAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=keckley+behind+the+scenes&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi61t_avMjWAhXoj1QKHeQBCc0Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=son&f=false Looking at this month's block and this quilt above (circa 1850) from the Connecticut Quilt Project and the Quilt Index... Antebellum Album 63.75" x 63.75" I thought of another set for the 12 Antebellum Album blocks (10 shown above). Set them on point with half a star as the edge. You've got room in the center for a 13th---maybe an inked wreath with an inscription. I drew the quilt up in EQ7 with 3" finished sashing. For the blocks around the edge I used the top right half of this month's block. Stitch 8 of the half blocks and then 4 corner blocks pieced of A & D. You'll need extra yardage for the diamonds in the edge and the sash: Pink & green---1/2 yard each Sashing and backgrounds for the edge blocks---3 yards. You should be able to get the binding out of that too. Cutting the Sashing 18 strips 3-1/2" x 12-1/2" 2 strips 3-1/2" x 18-1/2" 2 strips 3-1/2" x 48-1/2" 2 strips 3-1/2" x 78-1/2" See another version of the on-point setting at this post: https://civilwarquilts.blogspot.com/2018/08/alternate-set-for-antebellum-album.html Denniele added a seam to piece E. And changed the whole thing up here. More to read: Bess Beatty, Alamance: The Holt Family and Industrialization in a North Carolina county, 1837-1900 https://books.google.com/books?id=OLYAJivvFxcC&printsec=frontcover&dq=Alamance:+The+Holt+Family&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwil8OiRyM3WAhVE7SYKHVRdBq8Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q=Alamance%3A%20The%20Holt%20Family&f=false The Book of Burwell Students. https://books.google.com/books?id=WvI_Zlv4aIoC&printsec=frontcover&source=gbs_ge_summary_r&cad=0#v=onepage&q&f=false Sampler dated 1863 from the Nebraska project & the Quilt Index An idea for nine album blocks And another idea.

Block # 1 Wandering Lover by Becky Brown The first block in our 2018 series Antebellum Album features Indiana Fletcher whose family tells us much about cross border relationships North and South before the Civil War. Unknown class and teacher Throughout the year we'll explore women's academies and signature quilts in the 1840s and '50s. We'll look at school girls whose lives were interrupted by the American Civil War and examine album quilts. Each month I'll post a free pattern for a favorite signature block from those early friendship quilts. Indiana Fletcher 1828-1900 Indiana Fletcher was a woman whose ties to North and South were tightened during her school years. Born in 1828, Indiana's unusual name celebrated her Uncle Calvin's new home on the western frontier. Calvin and Elijah Fletcher were Vermonters who refused to stay put. Seeking opportunity far from his parents' New England farm, Indiana's father Elijah wound up as a Yankee school teacher near Lynchburg, Virginia. He married well-to-do student Maria Antoinette Crawford and in short time became a Southerner--- a slave holder at his Sweet Briar plantation. Indie and sister Betty benefited from their mother's family money and father's faith in education---"the best fortune we can give our children." Indiana traveled north to St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, New Jersey and the class of 1843. Indie attended school across the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania southwest of Burlington New Jersey, the star at the top. Sweet Briar is the lower star. The Episcopal school overlooking the Delaware River was five years old. St Mary's was later named Doane Academy after founder George Washington Doane, who believed girls' curricula should be the same as boys'. He and wife Eliza built Riverside, an Italianate mansion next to the school, with Eliza's money from her first husband. Eliza also used that inheritance to support the school in the early years while it became established as a women's academy with a national reputation. Doane Academy still provides an education for young men and women. The Doane's home, Riverside. St. Mary's influenced Indiana in many ways. Perhaps the most concrete was the makeover she and Betty planned for their Virginia family home, improving the brick farmhouse with a tower on either side, ala Riverside. Father Elijah wrote, "This is a project of my Daughters, and as I rarely deny to gratify any of their desires, have consented this." Remodeling also dictated travels to New York City to buy furniture and keep in touch with friends made in school. Sweet Briar in Virginia in the early 20th century. One can see the bones of a Southern plantation between the towers. Burlington, New Jersey was not only home to important 19th-century boarding schools but also to some of the earliest album quilts. We have no evidence that Indie Fletcher ever contributed to a quilt but as a fashionable young woman in Burlington she must have been aware of the new fad for patchwork albums. Our first signature block---just like Indie---has links to Indiana and New Jersey. The Block Block 1 by Mark Lauer We have four modelmakers this year and two of them are making two sets so you're going to get lots of ideas. Mark's doing one traditional red, yellow & green set. 1843 Signature quilt from Burlington, New Jersey Collection of Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CPQuilts/id/229 A nine-patch variation is not something we might pick for an album block but in the antebellum years that white center square was seen as the perfect spot for a name and sentiment. No applique in this block of the month! But you might get ideas. Those buds stitched in the corners are pretty cute. I've seen two albums dated 1842 and 1843 with the pictured pattern---both from New Jersey and both attributed to Quakers. The quilt directly above with sashing is the cover quilt on the New Jersey Quilts book. Variations were common for albums from the complex version above to a simpler version below. Online Auction. Quilt looks to be about 1880-1910. The pattern is BlockBase #1700 I've picked a pattern of medium complexity: #1700 in BlockBase. (#1702 is for the ambitious---54 small HST's per block.) Late 19th-century version of #1702 The oldest published name I've found is Wandering Lover, published in Hearth & Home magazine in 1895, an appropriate name for Southerner Indie and a certain New York minister, two people divided by Civil War. Mark's second set is done in the bright and black repros we call neon prints today---black novelty prints from about 1910. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 3 background squares 4-7/8” Cut each in half diagonally. You need six large triangles. B— Cut 9 dark and 3 light squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 18 dark and 6 light of the smaller triangles. C--- Cut 3 squares 4-1/2”. Block 1 by Pat Styring Pat is doing her distinctive collage-like interpretation: a little applique, a lot of fussy-cutting. The Civil War & After Indiana Fletcher Williams, perhaps in the 1880s. When Civil War broke out Indie was a rich single woman, a 33-year-old slave-holder living on the family plantation. Her personal war was less painful than that of many Virginians. Sweet Briar remained safe from fighting so many of her trials were just tribulations. The railroads no longer ran; food and goods were scarce. And she missed her Northern travels. Pass for travel in Virginia right after the War. Indie applied for a pass to cross into the Union from Virginia. In 1864 she asked Uncle Calvin to recommend her, hoping to escape the South where "fortunes are vanishing like the glories of the setting sun." Calvin Fletcher refused to vouch for her loyalty, fearing she'd try to get her hands on the Vermont family farm, but I would guess Indiana's motivation to cross the lines was more romance than greed. James Henry Williams Frustrated travel plans may have included a visit to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where J.H. Williams was an Episcopal minister. Once the war ended Williams visited Sweet Briar and married Indie soon after. Daughter Maria Georgiana (Daisy) was born in 1867. The Fletchers' fortune did not vanish with the Confederacy's setting sun and she and Williams continued to prosper throughout the century, dividing their time between New York and Virginia, while Daisy attended Manhattan schools. Daisy Williams (1867 -1884) Sadly, their only child inherited a debilitating disease and died at the age of 16. Her broken-hearted parents moved permanently to New York. In 1889 when J.H. Williams died his will requested Indiana use their fortune and Virginia land to establish a women's school in Daisy's memory. You may be familiar with Sweet Briar, a private women's liberal arts college on 3,000 acres near Lynchburg. Sweet Briar College in 1914, fourteen years after Indiana Fletcher Williams's death. Indie's mansion still stands Sweet Briar College was recently named a top ten small school in Forbes' Magazines survey. Denniele Bohannon is also doing two sets in high contrast brights. This is from her pink set. And this one with more triangles is from her blue set. BlockBase #1701. Sentiment for July Each month I'll show an inked flourish from a mid-century album. You might want to print it and trace it. Or try some free-hand grape vines with your signature. Information about the Fletcher/Williams family is abundant. I first read Indie's tale in a group biography of her father's family. Our Family Dreams is by Daniel Blake Smith. Album sold at Hindman Auctions about 15 years ago with a variation of this month's block on the top row next to the willow tree. If you'd prefer you can buy the patterns for Antebellum Album in my Etsy shop. I've packaged blocks 1-4, which you can buy as a PDF to print yourself for $5. Or I'll print it on my black & white printer and mail it to you for $9. You'll be getting patterns January through April ahead of everyone else so don't be telling anybody. Here are the links: https://www.etsy.com/listing/589746451/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4? https://www.etsy.com/listing/575941078/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4?

Block 5: Cross and Crown by Denniele Bohannon Our fifth Antebellum Album block is a version of a pattern we might call Bear's Paw or Goose Tracks. This month's focus is a Massachusetts public school. Charlotte Louise Bridges Forten (1837-1914) perhaps the 1870s. Like many 19th-century girls looking for an education, sixteen-year-old Lottie Forten left home to board with family friends while attending a girls' school as a day student. She'd grown up in Philadelphia where her father considered the available schools second rate. The only available schools for the Fortens were segregated colored schools. Free black Thomas Forten refused to send his daughter to a second-rate school. Essex Street, Salem, about 1870 Another opportunity appeared in 1853. Lottie was invited to Salem, Massachusetts, which prided itself on a colonial tradition of free public schools. Nearly ten years earlier Salem became the first city in Massachusetts to integrate those schools after a boycott of the "inferior" separate school by black parents. Lottie boarded with the Remond family, activists in the desegregation battle. In 1818 Sarah Ann Pollard, a student at Salem's Clarrisa Lawrence School for African-American girls, stitched this sampler now in the collection of Colonial Williamsburg. Salem schools may have been Integrated by law but Lottie was the only pupil of color in the Higginson Grammar School for Girls. Her diary details the emotional ups and downs of a shy, self-disciplined but self-deprecating teenager who was periodically bed ridden with "lung fever." Charlotte traveled from Philadelphia north to to Salem to find a good school Although many of Higginson's 200 students were undoubtedly unkind (Lottie marveled that "every colored person is not a misanthrope") she made good friends such as Sarah Brown (Brownie) who kept in touch through letters after leaving Salem. Fitting in was difficult but Lottie benefited from principal Mary Lakeman Sheperd's attention and mentoring. Mary Sheperd, about 12 years older than her star student, also remained a lifelong friend. Charlotte graduated from Salem Normal School (teachers' college) in 1856. Lottie enrolled in the Salem Normal School, again as the only black student and first black graduate. She was then hired by the Salem public schools as the first black school teacher to teach white children. Cross and Crown by Becky Brown The Block Cross and Crown seems a good block for Charlotte who was cursed or blessed by always being "first". "Miranda B Ervine/California" More likely from California, Pennsylvania, in Pittsburgh rather than the more famous west coast state. The block was quite popular for early friendship quilts. Quilt dated 1842 - 1848, Caroline Bradley Magruder. Documented in the Maryland project and in their book A Maryland Album: Quiltmaking Traditions, 1644-1934 In the 1840s and '50s these nine patches were usually appliqued rather than pieced. In the example below the quiltmaker began with white corner squares and appliqued 2 green triangles and one green square on top of the white. "David Raber Lebanon, Pa January 12, 1848" Applique stitches. You'd start with a pieced pink nine-patch and add the red applique pieces. But we are not doing applique this year! Cross and Crown By Denniele Bohannon More about that pattern here: http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/05/negative-thinking.html The pieced design based on equal size nine-patch squares is not in BlockBase or my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns because it wasn't published in this proportion. It should be on this page. I'm writing it in my copy as #1713.5. A pieced block of different proportions. We're familiar, however, with numerous pieced variations based on a narrower center strip. Here are a few 20th century names for BlockBase 1863 a and b. Appliqued blocks tend to be equal nine patches while the pieced version have narrower center strips. Cutting a 12" Finished, Pieced Block A - Cut 4 dark squares 2-1/2". B - Cut 2 dark and 2 light squares 3-1/4". Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 8 light triangles and 8 dark. C - Cut 4 dark and 1 light squares 4-1/2". This is a correction. D - Cut 2 light squares 4-7/8". Cut each in half diagonally to make 2 triangles. You need 4. Cross and Crown by Pat Styring The Civil War & After Charlotte spent some of her Civil War on St. Helena Island in Beaufort County, South Carolina, where she continued her diary. She taught freed slaves for two years until her health required she return North. The Penn School on St. Helen Island founded in 1862. Northern teachers volunteered to maintain schools on Union-occupied territory during the war. After the war she worked for the Treasury Department in Washington and married Reverend Francis J. Grimké. She died in 1914, praised as an exemplary minister’s wife and a poet, writer and lecturer in her own right. By Mark Lauer Sentiment for May This little flourish, full of good wishes, resembles a Union shield so would make an appropriate Union sentiment. Southern segregated school after the war Charlotte Forten Grimke’s diaries have been published in several forms. The most comprehensive is edited by Brenda Stevenson: Journals of Charlotte L. Forten Grimke (Schomberg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers. Oxford University Press, 1998.) See a preview here: https://books.google.com/books?id=3uHylBU24jMC&printsec=frontcover&dq=charlotte+forten+diary&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwili_-w6ZHWAhUGxYMKHV8fAk4Q6AEIPjAE#v=onepage&q=charlotte%20forten%20diary&f=false Cross and Crown by Mark Lauer 1842 - 1844 from the Rieff family and others, Pennsylvania Collection of Gail Bakkom. Quilt Index Signature Project http://www.quiltindex.org/~quilti/fulldisplay.php?kid=4-15-2F I show an album sampler each month with the monthly pattern in it but I cannot find this block in a sampler. Apparently it was most often used for repeat block signature quilts. For those of you who want to plan ahead: Buy the PDF's for patterns 5-8 on Etsy. https://www.etsy.com/listing/598578300 Or I'll mail you a black & white copy. https://www.etsy.com/listing/612414435

Becky in VA: Please add your finished tops and quilts, to this discussion topic so we can see them all together. Even though the blocks are coming to an end (sniffle, sniffle) we will still have lots to share in the coming weeks/months.

Antebellum Album #3 Friendship Star by Mark Lauer in traditional prints Album quilt top dated 1844 through 1858 in the collect...

Block # 1 Wandering Lover by Becky Brown The first block in our 2018 series Antebellum Album features Indiana Fletcher whose family tells us much about cross border relationships North and South before the Civil War. Unknown class and teacher Throughout the year we'll explore women's academies and signature quilts in the 1840s and '50s. We'll look at school girls whose lives were interrupted by the American Civil War and examine album quilts. Each month I'll post a free pattern for a favorite signature block from those early friendship quilts. Indiana Fletcher 1828-1900 Indiana Fletcher was a woman whose ties to North and South were tightened during her school years. Born in 1828, Indiana's unusual name celebrated her Uncle Calvin's new home on the western frontier. Calvin and Elijah Fletcher were Vermonters who refused to stay put. Seeking opportunity far from his parents' New England farm, Indiana's father Elijah wound up as a Yankee school teacher near Lynchburg, Virginia. He married well-to-do student Maria Antoinette Crawford and in short time became a Southerner--- a slave holder at his Sweet Briar plantation. Indie and sister Betty benefited from their mother's family money and father's faith in education---"the best fortune we can give our children." Indiana traveled north to St. Mary's Hall in Burlington, New Jersey and the class of 1843. Indie attended school across the Mason-Dixon line, which runs between Maryland and Pennsylvania southwest of Burlington New Jersey, the star at the top. Sweet Briar is the lower star. The Episcopal school overlooking the Delaware River was five years old. St Mary's was later named Doane Academy after founder George Washington Doane, who believed girls' curricula should be the same as boys'. He and wife Eliza built Riverside, an Italianate mansion next to the school, with Eliza's money from her first husband. Eliza also used that inheritance to support the school in the early years while it became established as a women's academy with a national reputation. Doane Academy still provides an education for young men and women. The Doane's home, Riverside. St. Mary's influenced Indiana in many ways. Perhaps the most concrete was the makeover she and Betty planned for their Virginia family home, improving the brick farmhouse with a tower on either side, ala Riverside. Father Elijah wrote, "This is a project of my Daughters, and as I rarely deny to gratify any of their desires, have consented this." Remodeling also dictated travels to New York City to buy furniture and keep in touch with friends made in school. Sweet Briar in Virginia in the early 20th century. One can see the bones of a Southern plantation between the towers. Burlington, New Jersey was not only home to important 19th-century boarding schools but also to some of the earliest album quilts. We have no evidence that Indie Fletcher ever contributed to a quilt but as a fashionable young woman in Burlington she must have been aware of the new fad for patchwork albums. Our first signature block---just like Indie---has links to Indiana and New Jersey. The Block Block 1 by Mark Lauer We have four modelmakers this year and two of them are making two sets so you're going to get lots of ideas. Mark's doing one traditional red, yellow & green set. 1843 Signature quilt from Burlington, New Jersey Collection of Conner Prairie Museum in Indiana http://indiamond6.ulib.iupui.edu/cdm/ref/collection/CPQuilts/id/229 A nine-patch variation is not something we might pick for an album block but in the antebellum years that white center square was seen as the perfect spot for a name and sentiment. No applique in this block of the month! But you might get ideas. Those buds stitched in the corners are pretty cute. I've seen two albums dated 1842 and 1843 with the pictured pattern---both from New Jersey and both attributed to Quakers. The quilt directly above with sashing is the cover quilt on the New Jersey Quilts book. Variations were common for albums from the complex version above to a simpler version below. Online Auction. Quilt looks to be about 1880-1910. The pattern is BlockBase #1700 I've picked a pattern of medium complexity: #1700 in BlockBase. (#1702 is for the ambitious---54 small HST's per block.) Late 19th-century version of #1702 The oldest published name I've found is Wandering Lover, published in Hearth & Home magazine in 1895, an appropriate name for Southerner Indie and a certain New York minister, two people divided by Civil War. Mark's second set is done in the bright and black repros we call neon prints today---black novelty prints from about 1910. Cutting a 12" Block A—Cut 3 background squares 4-7/8” Cut each in half diagonally. You need six large triangles. B— Cut 9 dark and 3 light squares 2-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally. You need 18 dark and 6 light of the smaller triangles. C--- Cut 3 squares 4-1/2”. Block 1 by Pat Styring Pat is doing her distinctive collage-like interpretation: a little applique, a lot of fussy-cutting. The Civil War & After Indiana Fletcher Williams, perhaps in the 1880s. When Civil War broke out Indie was a rich single woman, a 33-year-old slave-holder living on the family plantation. Her personal war was less painful than that of many Virginians. Sweet Briar remained safe from fighting so many of her trials were just tribulations. The railroads no longer ran; food and goods were scarce. And she missed her Northern travels. Pass for travel in Virginia right after the War. Indie applied for a pass to cross into the Union from Virginia. In 1864 she asked Uncle Calvin to recommend her, hoping to escape the South where "fortunes are vanishing like the glories of the setting sun." Calvin Fletcher refused to vouch for her loyalty, fearing she'd try to get her hands on the Vermont family farm, but I would guess Indiana's motivation to cross the lines was more romance than greed. James Henry Williams Frustrated travel plans may have included a visit to Dobbs Ferry, New York, where J.H. Williams was an Episcopal minister. Once the war ended Williams visited Sweet Briar and married Indie soon after. Daughter Maria Georgiana (Daisy) was born in 1867. The Fletchers' fortune did not vanish with the Confederacy's setting sun and she and Williams continued to prosper throughout the century, dividing their time between New York and Virginia, while Daisy attended Manhattan schools. Daisy Williams (1867 -1884) Sadly, their only child inherited a debilitating disease and died at the age of 16. Her broken-hearted parents moved permanently to New York. In 1889 when J.H. Williams died his will requested Indiana use their fortune and Virginia land to establish a women's school in Daisy's memory. You may be familiar with Sweet Briar, a private women's liberal arts college on 3,000 acres near Lynchburg. Sweet Briar College in 1914, fourteen years after Indiana Fletcher Williams's death. Indie's mansion still stands Sweet Briar College was recently named a top ten small school in Forbes' Magazines survey. Denniele Bohannon is also doing two sets in high contrast brights. This is from her pink set. And this one with more triangles is from her blue set. BlockBase #1701. Sentiment for July Each month I'll show an inked flourish from a mid-century album. You might want to print it and trace it. Or try some free-hand grape vines with your signature. Information about the Fletcher/Williams family is abundant. I first read Indie's tale in a group biography of her father's family. Our Family Dreams is by Daniel Blake Smith. Album sold at Hindman Auctions about 15 years ago with a variation of this month's block on the top row next to the willow tree. If you'd prefer you can buy the patterns for Antebellum Album in my Etsy shop. I've packaged blocks 1-4, which you can buy as a PDF to print yourself for $5. Or I'll print it on my black & white printer and mail it to you for $9. You'll be getting patterns January through April ahead of everyone else so don't be telling anybody. Here are the links: https://www.etsy.com/listing/589746451/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4? https://www.etsy.com/listing/575941078/antebellum-album-2018-bom-patterns-1-4?

Amy at Lexington Quilter http://lexingtonquilter.blogspot.com/2013/03/dixie-diary-month-3.html Amy's using French General Prints I've found many blocks from the Dixie Diary Block of the Month pattern up on the internet. RCCheryl Karen at Breezy Point Quilts She's making two using Jo Morton's Alexandria prints On her blog she says she "got sucked into it." Yay! That's my job. http://moosebaymuses.blogspot.com/2013_03_01_archive.html Pinkdeenster is incorporating scraps of old embroidery. Kookaburra Calling has added a second layer to the applique, which works nicely. And WonesmartCookie has added another little something to the applique. Those above are from our Flickr Group: http://www.flickr.com/groups/civilwarquilts2011/ I also found a few posts on other blogs.... CookiesCreek is using pink and brown. http://cookiescreek.com/tag/civil-war-quilt/ Reems Creek Chronicles http://rcquilting.blogspot.com/ Keep posting those pix!

Antebellum Album #2 Lend & Borrow by Pat Styring Emiline F. Cross attended Mount Holyoke Seminary in South Hadley, Massachusetts, thirty miles from her home, graduating from the elite women's academy in 1854 when she was about twenty. She must have been well-liked as classmates made her a gift of an album quilt. Emiline's quilt from Massachusetts Quilts: Our Common Wealth. Collection of the Blandford, Massachusetts Historical Society The pattern was also popular. We'd call it Lady of the Lake or Lost Ship. The name Lend & Borrow refers to the way the red and white shapes shift from positive to negative spaces when it's set like this. Just like last month's block, it's not what we'd think of when we decide to piece a friendship quilt. But Emiline's generation, the first to adapt albums to patchwork, thought the block with two different triangles quite the thing for single pattern or sampler quilts. Quilt with blocks dated 1839-1843 from the Silber Family collection, possibly New Jersey. Blocks in this quilt dated 1839 are among the earliest surviving examples of friendship style blocks. Mount Holyoke about 1870. Over 300 pupils and teachers lived in the five-story building. Mary Lyon, 1797-1849 Like founder Mary Lyon, Mt. Holyoke Seminary became a pillar of New England's cultural temple so Southern girls were unlikely to enroll. Classroom and students about 1870 In a list of 307 students and teachers in Emiline's class of 1853-1854 the majority were from New England states with westerners from Pennsylvania and Indiana to Wisconsin. I counted only one woman who might be considered a Southerner in the class of 1853-54. (Two others were from St. Louis and Washington City, cities with Southern roots that remained in the Union.) Sarah Jane Foster traveled from Jonesborough, Tennessee to South Hadley, Massachusetts for school. Most of her fellow pupils were from the green Union states here. Sarah Jane's interest in Mt. Holyoke might have been due to dreams of becoming a missionary. Alumni records indicate she married a widowed missionary in 1860, taught in Oroomiah, Persia and returned to Tennessee in 1869 after his death. Same classroom, same day Why did New Jersey's St. Mary's Seminary attract Virginians like Indiana Fletcher while Mt. Holyoke enrolled more girls from the South Pacific than the southern states? It was probably both curriculum and culture. Mt. Holyoke's classes were more academic than schools aiming to turn out cultured wives: Latin and logic, history, philosophy, algebra, music, science and calisthenics followed by examinations described as "severe" by Emily Dickinson. A Mount Holyoke graduate might become a teacher, spreading Miss Lyons's ideals to the next generation. The Library Mt. Holyoke's values were embedded in New England's culture of independence, self reliance, reform and improvement. Rather than being waited upon, students shared housekeeping chores. Mary Lyon not only hoped to create devout Christians of her pupils, she also encouraged them to "Attempt great things, accomplish great things." Southern parents would not be pleased to find their daughters returned as unmarriageable blue stockings and reformers. Olympia Brown was in Emiline's class. She may have decided Mt. Holyoke wasn't radical enough as she transferred to Antioch College and later attended theological school, ordained as a minister in 1863. This pair is thought to be friends Emily Dickinson and Kate Turner. Emily Dickinson attended Mt. Holyoke for the 1847-1848 term. Some speculate the religious focus was too much for the poet. While Mary Lyons ruled religious temperament was graded: students who professed, those who hoped to, and girls without hope. Emily remained in the last group. How many other Mt. Holyoke students received an album quilt from friends? Emiline's, well documented by Lynne Z. Bassett for the Massachusetts project, is one of two in the literature right now. This block from missionary Mary Matthews's 1888 album would have warmed Miss Lyons's heart. See the quilt here: https://ascdc.mtholyoke.edu/exhibits/show/marymatthews/quilt "Sharer in all the joys and sorrows of Holyoke life, Lizzie Hanmer, Wethersfield, Conn." The Block Denniele Bohannon's blue and white version Students at the Friends' Institute in New York City made a similar friendship quilt for teacher Patience Smith in 1852 with many names in the appliqued border. See more about this quilt: http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2017/12/patience-smith-sacred-to-memory.html One of the many variations of the pattern shown as a block about 1890 by the Ladies' Art Company, which called it Lady of the Lake In repeat block versions the large half-square-triangle is the block, the smaller triangles form the sashing. ROTARY CUTTING A 12” BLOCK A—Cut 6 dark & 6 light squares 3-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally into 2 triangles. You need 12 light and 12 dark triangles. B—Cut 1 dark & 1 light square 6-7/8”. Cut each in half diagonally into 2 triangles. You need 1 light and 1 dark triangle. SEWING By Mark Lauer Album quilt date-inscribed 1842-43. Los Angeles County Museum of Art. https://collections.lacma.org/node/170294 Another early version in red and white. The Civil War and After Here her name is spelled Emeline Tracking Emiline Cross into the Civil War years reveals she married Edward Lay Tinker, about 15 years older than she in 1856. She died in 1863 leaving two boys---a five-year-old and a baby. Emiline's quilt might have survived only because she did not. It's now in the Blandford Historical Society, the town where she was born. Emiline's Tennessee classmate Sarah Jane Foster's Civil War was fought far away in Persia. She married widowed missionary Samuel Audley Rhea in Jonesborough May, 1860. By July she was on a boat from Boston to Kurdistan. Sarah Foster Rhea in the middle east. She spent the years 1860-1865 with the Kurdish people. You can read her adventures in her husband's biography The Tennessean in Persia & Koordistan. https://books.google.com/books?id=QUM4MpsulqkC&dq=samuel+audley+rhea&source=gbs_navlinks_s By Mark Lauer Sentiment for February Inked sentiment from an 1854 quilt. We tend to be perfectionists but many of these inked blocks were not skillfully drawn. That's called charm. And if you blot the ink---make it part of the design. The eagle in the inking Read Lynne Z. Bassett's essay on Emiline Cross's quilt here: http://www.massquilts.org/Docs/MHC_Essay.pdf Denniele's pink version Dated 1851 A colorful sampler album belonging to the Stratford [Connecticut] Historical Society includes several versions of this month's block. From the Connecticut Project & the Quilt Index. Lend & Borrow by Becky Brown Post pictures of your blocks in our Facebook group. Ask to join and I'll let you in---or just lurk to watch the fun. Bookmark this link: https://www.facebook.com/groups/799666626885682/ The photos of Mount Holyoke are from this site: https://www.mtholyoke.edu/~dalbino/photos/stereos.html

Antebellum Album 1840-1860 We tend to picture all 19th-century Americans facing off across the Mason-Dixon line in a deeply d...