5 Madison Star by Becky Brown The patterns were free online for two years but now I am offering them for sale in two formats at my Etsy shop. Buy a PDF or a Paper Pattern through the mail here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbaraBrackmanShop In June, 1854 a woman who'd been hiding on the Kentucky bluffs overlooking the Ohio River found passage over the water to the free state of Indiana. Sympathetic Hoosiers hid her under hay stacks and brush heaps. Delia Webster had, declared the Madison Courier, "escaped on the 'underground railroad', vanished, vamoosed…" "Running Down Slaves With Dogs" Delia was not a fugitive slave but a notorious "negro stealer." After serving time in a Kentucky prison, she had purchased a Kentucky farm for a station on the Underground Railroad---an act defying both prudence and the Kentucky authorities. She was, "a very bold and defiant kind of woman, without a spark of feminine modesty," criticized the Louisville Democrat. Delia Ann Webster (1817-1876) about the time of the end of the Civil War Delia Webster's life story with its cliff-hanging moments and daring escapes reads like a melodrama. Like all melodramas, the story omits character shading to help us understand her motives and emotions. Webster never fit the stereotype of New England abolitionist illustrated in Albert D. Richardson's Beyond the Mississippi At 26 years of age she traveled from her Vermont home to Kentucky to teach. Delia apparently planned to lead a double life spiriting runaway slaves to safety as she taught their owners' children. Much of her Underground Railroad activity remains secret. Her best documented escapade, helping the Lewis & Harriet Hayden family in 1844, is known only because she and co-conspirator Calvin Fairbank were arrested, convicted and jailed in the Kentucky Penitentiary. Sentenced to two years, Delia served about six weeks as the prison's only female inmate. Her 1845 pardon has been attributed to her charm. She captivated Warden Newton Craig and his wife Lucy. Freed and famous, Delia returned to Vermont and published a book, an unreliable account of the Haydens' escape in answer to "low innuendoes and foul detraction." After four years she again traveled South, settling in Madison, Indiana, a town that was by accident of geography an important junction of the Underground Railroad. Routes for runaways from the Ohio River south of Indiana and Ohio up to Michigan and Canada. The arrow points to Madison. Just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, Madison was perched between the river and a vertical slope covered with an unruly woodland where escapees could hide out in a forest of ridges and hollows. Delia is rumored to have helped many. Madison Star by Jean Stanclift Madison was divided between slavery's supporters and freedom's advocates.The notorious abolitionist was unwelcome even before she scandalized Madison's citizens by carrying on a very public relationship with the married Kentucky warden who'd signed her pardon. Kentucky's bluffs across the Ohio River from Madison, Indiana today. It's said that Madison knew when Kentucky vigilantes were raiding Delia's farm by the glow of burning outbuildings on the ridge. After a few years, Delia wearied of waiting for fugitives to come to her and borrowed money from Warden Craig to buy farmland on the Kentucky plateau opposite Madison, a perfect temporary refuge for runaways on the first leg of the journey. Kentucky's slaveholders had only circumstantial evidence of her help with escapes. With Delia Webster living in Trimble County, the slave population declined. By 1854 affection between warden and ex-prisoner faded. Delia, long on nerve but short on discretion, published Craig's letters hoping to ruin his career. He retaliated by reviving the ten-year-old case against her for Harriet Hayden's rescue. (She'd served time only for helping Lewis Hayden.) Delia's much-publicized escape from her second Kentucky trial into the hills behind Madison eventually landed her in the city's jail, but Indiana courts set her free, refusing to return her. Delia realized Kentucky's danger and never crossed the river again. Stevens House, Vergennes, Vermont She went home to New England and spent the time before the Civil War writing and lecturing about her exploits and the evils of slavery. DELIA WEBSTER AGAIN. Her 1854 escape to Indiana received a good deal of newspaper coverage. See an article in the New York Times here: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F70E16FF3959157493C6AB178CD85F408584F9 This photograph of Delia and her sisters in their forties and fifties gives a glimpse of Delia's theatrical personality. Her sisters have dressed their hair in up-to-date style with center parts but Delia wears a fringe (bangs) with old-fashioned sausage curls, perhaps to recapture the look of her heyday in the 1840s. She's painted her lips and cheeks. She might have indulged in the plastic surgery of the era, having wax injected under her skin, as she bears little resemblance to her pleasantly aging sisters. Madison Star by Dustin Cecil Delia lived into her mid eighties, dying in Des Moines in 1904, eccentric and mysterious to the end. Madison Star by Dustin Cecil Make a Quilt a Month Set four Madison Stars side by side to make a small wall quilt. Keep the fabric in the center pinwheel the same but vary the colors in each block to create a sparkling quartet. Add a 2-inch finished inner border and a 4" finished outer border for a 36" square quilt. What We Can Learn About the Underground Railroad from Delia Webster's Story. Assisting escaping slaves was dangerous work. Agents were arrested and jailed by Southern authorities and occasionally executed by vigilantes. Delia served only six weeks for helping Lewis Hayden but Calvin Fairbank spent 17 years in confinement for two separate convictions. Marker in Trimble County, Kentucky Links to More Information: You can read Delia Webster's account of her trial for aiding the Haydens in her pamphlet: Kentucky jurisprudence: a history of the trial of Miss Delia A. Webster at Lexington, Kentucky, Dec'r 17-21, 1844 before the Hon. Richard Buckner on a charge of aiding slaves to escape from that commonwealth, with miscellaneous remarks, including her views on American slavery / written by herself. Click here to see it at the Kentucky Digital Library. http://kdl.kyvl.org/catalog/xt7mcv4bpd7x_7? She described the escape rather unreliably and included trial transcripts and accounts of her imprisonment and pardon. She later claimed her father forced her to lie about the Haydens' escape. Her anti-slavery partner also wrote a memoir. Click here to read it at the Internet Archive: Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times: How He "Fought the Good Fight" to Prepare "the Way." https://archive.org/details/durringslavery00fairrich Lewis and Harriet Hayden wound up in Boston after Webster and Fairbank got them out of Kentucky. See a picture of their Boston house and read about their activities in the fight for freedom by clicking on this link: http://www.nps.gov/boaf/historyculture/lewis-and-harriet-hayden-house.htm Find Out More In Print For much more about Delia Webster's story see Randolph Paul Runyon's biography, Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996). For a review of the book from H-Net Online click on this link: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=15581857574286

Block 5 in my mother's sampler...

5 Madison Star by Becky Brown The patterns were free online for two years but now I am offering them for sale in two formats at my Etsy shop. Buy a PDF or a Paper Pattern through the mail here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbaraBrackmanShop In June, 1854 a woman who'd been hiding on the Kentucky bluffs overlooking the Ohio River found passage over the water to the free state of Indiana. Sympathetic Hoosiers hid her under hay stacks and brush heaps. Delia Webster had, declared the Madison Courier, "escaped on the 'underground railroad', vanished, vamoosed…" "Running Down Slaves With Dogs" Delia was not a fugitive slave but a notorious "negro stealer." After serving time in a Kentucky prison, she had purchased a Kentucky farm for a station on the Underground Railroad---an act defying both prudence and the Kentucky authorities. She was, "a very bold and defiant kind of woman, without a spark of feminine modesty," criticized the Louisville Democrat. Delia Ann Webster (1817-1876) about the time of the end of the Civil War Delia Webster's life story with its cliff-hanging moments and daring escapes reads like a melodrama. Like all melodramas, the story omits character shading to help us understand her motives and emotions. Webster never fit the stereotype of New England abolitionist illustrated in Albert D. Richardson's Beyond the Mississippi At 26 years of age she traveled from her Vermont home to Kentucky to teach. Delia apparently planned to lead a double life spiriting runaway slaves to safety as she taught their owners' children. Much of her Underground Railroad activity remains secret. Her best documented escapade, helping the Lewis & Harriet Hayden family in 1844, is known only because she and co-conspirator Calvin Fairbank were arrested, convicted and jailed in the Kentucky Penitentiary. Sentenced to two years, Delia served about six weeks as the prison's only female inmate. Her 1845 pardon has been attributed to her charm. She captivated Warden Newton Craig and his wife Lucy. Freed and famous, Delia returned to Vermont and published a book, an unreliable account of the Haydens' escape in answer to "low innuendoes and foul detraction." After four years she again traveled South, settling in Madison, Indiana, a town that was by accident of geography an important junction of the Underground Railroad. Routes for runaways from the Ohio River south of Indiana and Ohio up to Michigan and Canada. The arrow points to Madison. Just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, Madison was perched between the river and a vertical slope covered with an unruly woodland where escapees could hide out in a forest of ridges and hollows. Delia is rumored to have helped many. Madison Star by Jean Stanclift Madison was divided between slavery's supporters and freedom's advocates.The notorious abolitionist was unwelcome even before she scandalized Madison's citizens by carrying on a very public relationship with the married Kentucky warden who'd signed her pardon. Kentucky's bluffs across the Ohio River from Madison, Indiana today. It's said that Madison knew when Kentucky vigilantes were raiding Delia's farm by the glow of burning outbuildings on the ridge. After a few years, Delia wearied of waiting for fugitives to come to her and borrowed money from Warden Craig to buy farmland on the Kentucky plateau opposite Madison, a perfect temporary refuge for runaways on the first leg of the journey. Kentucky's slaveholders had only circumstantial evidence of her help with escapes. With Delia Webster living in Trimble County, the slave population declined. By 1854 affection between warden and ex-prisoner faded. Delia, long on nerve but short on discretion, published Craig's letters hoping to ruin his career. He retaliated by reviving the ten-year-old case against her for Harriet Hayden's rescue. (She'd served time only for helping Lewis Hayden.) Delia's much-publicized escape from her second Kentucky trial into the hills behind Madison eventually landed her in the city's jail, but Indiana courts set her free, refusing to return her. Delia realized Kentucky's danger and never crossed the river again. Stevens House, Vergennes, Vermont She went home to New England and spent the time before the Civil War writing and lecturing about her exploits and the evils of slavery. DELIA WEBSTER AGAIN. Her 1854 escape to Indiana received a good deal of newspaper coverage. See an article in the New York Times here: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F70E16FF3959157493C6AB178CD85F408584F9 This photograph of Delia and her sisters in their forties and fifties gives a glimpse of Delia's theatrical personality. Her sisters have dressed their hair in up-to-date style with center parts but Delia wears a fringe (bangs) with old-fashioned sausage curls, perhaps to recapture the look of her heyday in the 1840s. She's painted her lips and cheeks. She might have indulged in the plastic surgery of the era, having wax injected under her skin, as she bears little resemblance to her pleasantly aging sisters. Madison Star by Dustin Cecil Delia lived into her mid eighties, dying in Des Moines in 1904, eccentric and mysterious to the end. Madison Star by Dustin Cecil Make a Quilt a Month Set four Madison Stars side by side to make a small wall quilt. Keep the fabric in the center pinwheel the same but vary the colors in each block to create a sparkling quartet. Add a 2-inch finished inner border and a 4" finished outer border for a 36" square quilt. What We Can Learn About the Underground Railroad from Delia Webster's Story. Assisting escaping slaves was dangerous work. Agents were arrested and jailed by Southern authorities and occasionally executed by vigilantes. Delia served only six weeks for helping Lewis Hayden but Calvin Fairbank spent 17 years in confinement for two separate convictions. Marker in Trimble County, Kentucky Links to More Information: You can read Delia Webster's account of her trial for aiding the Haydens in her pamphlet: Kentucky jurisprudence: a history of the trial of Miss Delia A. Webster at Lexington, Kentucky, Dec'r 17-21, 1844 before the Hon. Richard Buckner on a charge of aiding slaves to escape from that commonwealth, with miscellaneous remarks, including her views on American slavery / written by herself. Click here to see it at the Kentucky Digital Library. http://kdl.kyvl.org/catalog/xt7mcv4bpd7x_7? She described the escape rather unreliably and included trial transcripts and accounts of her imprisonment and pardon. She later claimed her father forced her to lie about the Haydens' escape. Her anti-slavery partner also wrote a memoir. Click here to read it at the Internet Archive: Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times: How He "Fought the Good Fight" to Prepare "the Way." https://archive.org/details/durringslavery00fairrich Lewis and Harriet Hayden wound up in Boston after Webster and Fairbank got them out of Kentucky. See a picture of their Boston house and read about their activities in the fight for freedom by clicking on this link: http://www.nps.gov/boaf/historyculture/lewis-and-harriet-hayden-house.htm Find Out More In Print For much more about Delia Webster's story see Randolph Paul Runyon's biography, Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996). For a review of the book from H-Net Online click on this link: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=15581857574286

5 Madison Star by Becky Brown The patterns were free online for two years but now I am offering them for sale in two formats at my Etsy shop. Buy a PDF or a Paper Pattern through the mail here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbaraBrackmanShop In June, 1854 a woman who'd been hiding on the Kentucky bluffs overlooking the Ohio River found passage over the water to the free state of Indiana. Sympathetic Hoosiers hid her under hay stacks and brush heaps. Delia Webster had, declared the Madison Courier, "escaped on the 'underground railroad', vanished, vamoosed…" "Running Down Slaves With Dogs" Delia was not a fugitive slave but a notorious "negro stealer." After serving time in a Kentucky prison, she had purchased a Kentucky farm for a station on the Underground Railroad---an act defying both prudence and the Kentucky authorities. She was, "a very bold and defiant kind of woman, without a spark of feminine modesty," criticized the Louisville Democrat. Delia Ann Webster (1817-1876) about the time of the end of the Civil War Delia Webster's life story with its cliff-hanging moments and daring escapes reads like a melodrama. Like all melodramas, the story omits character shading to help us understand her motives and emotions. Webster never fit the stereotype of New England abolitionist illustrated in Albert D. Richardson's Beyond the Mississippi At 26 years of age she traveled from her Vermont home to Kentucky to teach. Delia apparently planned to lead a double life spiriting runaway slaves to safety as she taught their owners' children. Much of her Underground Railroad activity remains secret. Her best documented escapade, helping the Lewis & Harriet Hayden family in 1844, is known only because she and co-conspirator Calvin Fairbank were arrested, convicted and jailed in the Kentucky Penitentiary. Sentenced to two years, Delia served about six weeks as the prison's only female inmate. Her 1845 pardon has been attributed to her charm. She captivated Warden Newton Craig and his wife Lucy. Freed and famous, Delia returned to Vermont and published a book, an unreliable account of the Haydens' escape in answer to "low innuendoes and foul detraction." After four years she again traveled South, settling in Madison, Indiana, a town that was by accident of geography an important junction of the Underground Railroad. Routes for runaways from the Ohio River south of Indiana and Ohio up to Michigan and Canada. The arrow points to Madison. Just across the Ohio River from Kentucky, Madison was perched between the river and a vertical slope covered with an unruly woodland where escapees could hide out in a forest of ridges and hollows. Delia is rumored to have helped many. Madison Star by Jean Stanclift Madison was divided between slavery's supporters and freedom's advocates.The notorious abolitionist was unwelcome even before she scandalized Madison's citizens by carrying on a very public relationship with the married Kentucky warden who'd signed her pardon. Kentucky's bluffs across the Ohio River from Madison, Indiana today. It's said that Madison knew when Kentucky vigilantes were raiding Delia's farm by the glow of burning outbuildings on the ridge. After a few years, Delia wearied of waiting for fugitives to come to her and borrowed money from Warden Craig to buy farmland on the Kentucky plateau opposite Madison, a perfect temporary refuge for runaways on the first leg of the journey. Kentucky's slaveholders had only circumstantial evidence of her help with escapes. With Delia Webster living in Trimble County, the slave population declined. By 1854 affection between warden and ex-prisoner faded. Delia, long on nerve but short on discretion, published Craig's letters hoping to ruin his career. He retaliated by reviving the ten-year-old case against her for Harriet Hayden's rescue. (She'd served time only for helping Lewis Hayden.) Delia's much-publicized escape from her second Kentucky trial into the hills behind Madison eventually landed her in the city's jail, but Indiana courts set her free, refusing to return her. Delia realized Kentucky's danger and never crossed the river again. Stevens House, Vergennes, Vermont She went home to New England and spent the time before the Civil War writing and lecturing about her exploits and the evils of slavery. DELIA WEBSTER AGAIN. Her 1854 escape to Indiana received a good deal of newspaper coverage. See an article in the New York Times here: http://query.nytimes.com/mem/archive-free/pdf?res=F70E16FF3959157493C6AB178CD85F408584F9 This photograph of Delia and her sisters in their forties and fifties gives a glimpse of Delia's theatrical personality. Her sisters have dressed their hair in up-to-date style with center parts but Delia wears a fringe (bangs) with old-fashioned sausage curls, perhaps to recapture the look of her heyday in the 1840s. She's painted her lips and cheeks. She might have indulged in the plastic surgery of the era, having wax injected under her skin, as she bears little resemblance to her pleasantly aging sisters. Madison Star by Dustin Cecil Delia lived into her mid eighties, dying in Des Moines in 1904, eccentric and mysterious to the end. Madison Star by Dustin Cecil Make a Quilt a Month Set four Madison Stars side by side to make a small wall quilt. Keep the fabric in the center pinwheel the same but vary the colors in each block to create a sparkling quartet. Add a 2-inch finished inner border and a 4" finished outer border for a 36" square quilt. What We Can Learn About the Underground Railroad from Delia Webster's Story. Assisting escaping slaves was dangerous work. Agents were arrested and jailed by Southern authorities and occasionally executed by vigilantes. Delia served only six weeks for helping Lewis Hayden but Calvin Fairbank spent 17 years in confinement for two separate convictions. Marker in Trimble County, Kentucky Links to More Information: You can read Delia Webster's account of her trial for aiding the Haydens in her pamphlet: Kentucky jurisprudence: a history of the trial of Miss Delia A. Webster at Lexington, Kentucky, Dec'r 17-21, 1844 before the Hon. Richard Buckner on a charge of aiding slaves to escape from that commonwealth, with miscellaneous remarks, including her views on American slavery / written by herself. Click here to see it at the Kentucky Digital Library. http://kdl.kyvl.org/catalog/xt7mcv4bpd7x_7? She described the escape rather unreliably and included trial transcripts and accounts of her imprisonment and pardon. She later claimed her father forced her to lie about the Haydens' escape. Her anti-slavery partner also wrote a memoir. Click here to read it at the Internet Archive: Rev. Calvin Fairbank During Slavery Times: How He "Fought the Good Fight" to Prepare "the Way." https://archive.org/details/durringslavery00fairrich Lewis and Harriet Hayden wound up in Boston after Webster and Fairbank got them out of Kentucky. See a picture of their Boston house and read about their activities in the fight for freedom by clicking on this link: http://www.nps.gov/boaf/historyculture/lewis-and-harriet-hayden-house.htm Find Out More In Print For much more about Delia Webster's story see Randolph Paul Runyon's biography, Delia Webster and the Underground Railroad (Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1996). For a review of the book from H-Net Online click on this link: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=15581857574286

Threads of Memory Block 1: Portsmouth Star by Becky Brown The first block in the 2104 block-of-the-month here at Civil War quilts is Portsmouth Star, a new block with an old-fashioned look, named for Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The coastal town was a place of refuge for Ona Judge Staines and uncounted other African-Americans looking for liberty. The townspeople, as John Whipple informed George Washington in 1796, were “in favor of universal freedom.” Threads of Memory Block 1: Portsmouth Star by Jean Stanclift The patterns were free online for two years but now I am offering them for sale in two formats at my Etsy shop. Buy a PDF or a Paper Pattern through the mail here: https://www.etsy.com/shop/BarbaraBrackmanShop On June 1st, 1796, a ship named the Nancy sailed into Portsmouth harbor near what is now the New Hampshire/Maine border. An African-American girl named Ona Marie Judge made her way from the ship to the town. Just fifteen, the runaway slave hoped to pass as a free black in Portsmouth's small African-American community. Ona's new life collapsed one day that summer when she passed an old acquaintance on the street. Elizabeth Langdon, eighteen-year-old daughter of New Hampshire's Senator, recognized the fugitive from visits to Ona's mistress's parlor. Elizabeth tried to say hello but Ona brushed by without a word, hoping the wealthy white girl would believe she'd been mistaken. Elizabeth was confident she knew Ona and word soon reached the Virginia slave owners that their property resided in New Hampshire. Ona's master and mistress wanted her back and knew they had constitutional rights to recover the runaway. Under the 1793 Fugitive Slave Act, Portsmouth's officials were obliged to arrest Ona and hold her. "Absconded from the household of the President of the United States, ONEY JUDGE, a light mulatto girl, much freckled, with very black eyes and bushy black hair..." Ona's master was quite familiar with the Fugitive Slave Act. As President, George Washington had signed the law. Washington pressured federal appointees to return the girl he called Oney. His correspondence, visible online at the Library of Congress, tells some of the story. When Ona was in her seventies she talked to two newspaper correspondents about her escape. Their articles tell the other side. When they moved to the new capital of Philadelphia the first family brought eight slaves from their Virginia plantation. At the age of ten Ona became Martha Washington's personal maid. Oney "was handy and useful…being perfect Mistress of her needle," wrote Washington. The President's House in Philadelphia. Ona came to work here in 1790. She recalled that her life in the President's household posed no hardships but she wanted freedom, particularly after she learned the Washingtons planned to will her to granddaughter Elizabeth Parke Custis. Ona apparently did not care for Eliza Custis, a few years her junior. She was determined "never to be her slave." Gilbert Stuart painted this picture of Eliza Custis the year Ona ran away. Between Ona's opinion and the portrait, we get an idea of Eliza's personality. Realizing Washington's presidency would soon be over, Ona made the most of her last weeks in Philadelphia. "Whilst they were packing up to go to Virginia, I was packing to go, I didn't know where; for I knew that if I went back to Virginia, I should never get my liberty. I had friends among the colored people of Philadelphia, had my things carried there beforehand, and left Washington's house while they were eating dinner." Ona's escape by ship took her from Philadelphia north to Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Captain John Bolles or Bowles Somehow she booked passage on the Nancy commanded by Captain John Bolles. "I never told his name till after he died, a few years since, lest they should punish him for bringing me away." Martha Washington with a slave By Edward Savage Like many slave holders, the Washingtons believed outsiders stirred up discontent. Martha was of the opinion that a deranged Frenchman had seduced Ona. Joseph Whipple, the New Hampshire official charged with returning Ona, explained that the escape was Ona's idea---her "thirst for compleat freedom…had been her only motive for absconding." An angry George Washington fussed, "I am sorry to give you, or any one else trouble on such a trifling occasion, but the ingratitude of the girl, who was brought up and treated more like a child than a Servant…." Letter from Whipple "I have ascertained the fact that the person mentioned is in this town." Whipple warned the Ex-President it would be difficult to persuade Ona and just as hard to kidnap her, despite the fact that New Hampshire still sanctioned slavery. "I am informed that many Slaves from the southern states have come to Massachusetts & some to New Hampshire, either of which States they consider as an asylum; the popular opinion here in favor of universal freedom has rendered it difficult to get them back to their masters." Washington instructed Whipple to use charm. "If she will return to her former service without obliging me to use compulsory means to effect it, her late conduct will be forgiven." Whipple should avoid violence, any measures that "would excite a mob or riot." Whipple's last letter on the topic, mailed right before Christmas 1796, announced the banns for Ona's marriage to Joseph Staines had been published. He was pessimistic he could act without causing the riot Washington hoped to avoid. Portsmouth Star by Becky Brown from my Ladies's Album reproduction collection for Moda--- in shops in March. Ona married sailor John Staines. A year passed in which she gave birth to daughter Eliza before she heard from the Washingtons again. Frustrated with Whipple's inaction, Washington sent nephew Burwell Bassett to retrieve her. Bassett tried persuasive lies, promising Ona that on her return the Washingtons would free her, something George Washington had actually dismissed as a bad example to the other slaves. Ona recalled her response to Bassett: "I am free now and choose to remain so." The Langdon's house, still standing, was a decade old at the time of the plot to kidnap Ona. Bassett returned to Portsmouth while John Staines was at sea, planning to take Ona and the baby by force. He sketched his plot to Elizabeth Langdon's father at whose home he was lodging. Senator John Langdon sent a messenger warning Ona to run. Senator John Langdon warned Ona of the Washingtons' kidnap plans. Portsmouth Star by Dustin Cecil in my Civil War Jubilee collection plus white. The story's end appeared in the newspaper account fifty years later: "She went to the stable and hired a boy with a horse and carriage to carry her to [the Jack's house] in Greenland [New Hampshire] where she now resides, a distance of eight miles, and remained there until her husband returned from sea." Washington Mourning Picture Published by Pember & Luzarder, 1800, from the Library of Congress Ona was unlikely to have mourned Washington's passing. Washington died late in 1799. "They never troubled me any more after he was gone." Ona and her husband raised two or three children in Portsmouth. After being widowed she returned to the house of her Greenland friends, the free black family of John Jacks. In the 1840s, newspapermen found her there, poor and ill but glad to tell her tale. Ona Judge Staines's story tells us of a network of help in the nation's early years, an Underground Railroad decades before that name or railroads of any kind appeared. Ona absconded on her own but she remained free due to the kindness of many people, among them friends in Philadelphia, ship captain John Bolles, Joseph Whipple who stubbornly refused to act in Washington's behalf, Senator Langdon who alerted her to flee and the Jacks family who took her in when she needed refuge. What We Can Learn About the Underground Railroad from Ona Judge's Story Officials often refused to enforce the slavery laws. Refugees like Ona could live out in the open because authorities did not enforce the laws. New Hampshire was a slave state in the 1790s and her owner had all the clout one could wish for, but officials like Whipple chose not to act. Others like Langdon surreptitiously assisted her. We can only guess their motives, but Whipple suggested that "popular opinion" in the town threatened civil disorder if Ona was arrested. You can find much more about Ona Judge Staines’s life by reading several primary documents online. Read two interviews by clicking on this link to a site about the President’s House in Philadelphia. http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/slaves/oneyinterview.htm Read correspondence between George Washington and Joseph Whipple concerning Ona by clicking on this link to the website of the Weeks Public Library in Greenland, New Hampshire. http://www.weekslibrary.org/ona_maria_judge.htm See three of Whipple’s letters by going to the Library of Congress website American Memory. Type Joseph Whipple in the search box at the top right. When the results appear, click on the three letters in the George Washington Papers collection near the top of the first page (letters 2, 3 and 4). www.memory.loc.gov Read more about Ona Judge Staines at these sites: http://www.weekslibrary.org/ona_maria_judge.htm http://www.seacoastnh.com/blackhistory/ona.html http://www.ushistory.org/presidentshouse/news/images/senior_oney.pdf Portsmouth Star Dustin's All-Ticking Version This is real ticking---not a printed quilt-weight fabric. Options Make A Quilt A Month Set nine Portsmouth Star blocks together with a 3" border to create a 42" quilt. Alternate 5 blocks with one background and 4 with another for variety. Another Option You could rotate those smaller half-square triangles to create a layered look but it would require set-in seams (Y seams) in each corner. Calm down; you can do it.