Reality Bites
One trouble with fact checking quilt stories is disappointment at finding that all those lovely memories are often just myth, wishful family recall and/or the universal love of an inspiring narrative. The example we are following here, a pair of Missouri quilts, combines a spectacular-looking quilt or two and tales of slavery, historic houses and the Civil War with a few Jayhawkers thrown in for extra drama.
See two previous posts here:
https://quilthistorysouth.blogspot.com/2020/11/tennessee-to-missouri-1-regional-style.html
https://quilthistorysouth.blogspot.com/2020/11/tennessee-to-missouri-2-maria-rodgers.html
Quilt attributed to Maria Rodgers Martin, (1831-1922)
The Feathered Star quilt, one of a pair of unusual fringed, pieced quilts with stuffed-work quilting, has descended in the family and in the historic house of slave-owners who emigrated to Missouri in the early 1840s.
The house, Wayside Rest, today
The Gillenwaters/Browns came to Cass County from Rhea County, Tennessee with about 30 enslaved people. Descendants passed on the history that one was Maria Jane Rodgers who'd have been about 11 years old when she arrived in Missouri. She married Fred Martin of the farm and left Missouri for the free state of Kansas without him in 1863 when she was about 32.
View of Lawrence from the top of the hill where the
University is now.
Did Maria make this quilt between 1845 when she might have been old enough and 1862 when she left Cass County for Lawrence? We can look at opportunity and ability.
1) Opportunity. Did Maria sew?
The quilts are obviously the work of a talented seamstress. The piece-work designs are not for beginners; the stuffed work quilting, which would have taken months of hand work, is quite impressive. The fringed edge might have been hand knotted (People sat around in the evenings and knotted fringes) or purchased.
Fringed edges became unfashionable after the Civil War
Each step in this quilt was labor-intensive and well-executed.
The yard at Wayside Rest recently, rarely this quiet when
40 or more people lived on the place in the 1850s.
We can only glimpse Maria's life in Missouri and in Kansas.The 1850 slave schedule for the Gillenwaters/Browns lists 20 people, 6 of them female, ages 42, 35, 12 (possibly Maria actually about 18), 11, 6, and 5. The adult and adolescent women might be field hands but more likely were employed as house servants in typical occupations such as cooking, cleaning, sewing, and child care. Along with family history that Maria made the star quilt we also hear she was the caretaker for the Brown family's children.
Slave owner Mary Roddye Gillenwaters Brown (1819-1890) brought 3 children from Tennessee (an infant, a 5 year-old and a 3-year old) in 1842.
Children cared for younger children
Maria as a young adolescent would typically be the right age to act as nanny to children not much younger than herself. Mary went on to have 7 children, the youngest born in 1853.
Mary's only daughter Elizabeth Brown Daniel, 15 when
Maria left, was born in Missouri in 1847. After the
war she married Kentucky-born Henry Clay Daniel,
a Harrisonville lawyer. She may have been the keeper
of the quilts and the stories.
Maria's job supervising 6 boys and a girl would have left her little time for sewing fancywork, although one could imagine that she might have been put to work at a quilting frame after the children were in bed.
Missouri Historical Society
Louisa, enslaved childcare worker with
charge H. E. Heyward, 1858
The baby may be Confederate Missourian
Harry E. Hayward (1857-1933) born in Tennessee.
Maria had eight children of her own, although hers are not so well documented. The 1865 Kansas census lists three: Elvira and Charles born in the 1850s and Benjamin born about 1861.
2) Ability. Did Maria sew well enough to make this elegant quilt?
Before the sewing machine and the advent of factory-made clothing, women spent a good deal of their time hand sewing in three categories:
Hand-sewing undergarments after the war
1) The everyday necessity of plain sewing: making and repairing clothing and household linens.
Fitting a bodice like this silk tartan plaid
required training.
2) Skilled work such as fitting and stitching fashionable clothing, doing upholstery and interior goods.
3) Fancywork, the enjoyable activities at which women of a certain class passed their free time
Woman stitching an applique quilt block (?)
1850s?
From America Hurrah Antiques
In the hierarchy of women's work those trained in skilled sewing, Black or white, were far more able to earn a living than those who could only do plain sewing or those who had no sewing expertise. The only evidence we have of Maria's actual sewing skills is rather oblique. After her life as a slave she lived in Lawrence for over 40 years. She did not prosper. As Kansas historian Katie Armitage writes in her study of African-American residents in Lawrence: "Single black women were among the poorest in the community."
Woman ironing about 1930, South Carolina
Photo by Doris Ullman, Library of Congress
Maria, listed as a "pauper" in the 1865 census, was certainly among the poorest of the 2,000 Lawrencians of African-American descent. She was one of 27 Black women who worked at "Washing & Ironing" that year, and apparently laundry work was her long time employment. In the hierarchy of women's work Washing & Ironing was near the bottom. The work was hard; the pay was bad. Had she any other talents, skills or assets she would likely have used them to rise above paupership.
Maria was not a dressmaker; never described as a professional seamstress of any kind. Had she even basic skills at plain sewing, making simple garments, she would have made more money for less labor. Maria's life in Kansas indicates she was not a seamstress, skilled or otherwise.
Looking at the quilts and the documents of Maria's life we can conclude she did not make either quilt. Although she had the opportunity to make such a quilt in Missouri in the 1850s, she seems to have lacked the skills.
Next Post: Then who did sew the quilts?
Further Reading:
Katie H. Armitage, "'Seeking a Home Where He Himself Is Free': African Americans Build a Community in Douglas County, Kansas,"
Kansas History, Autumn 2008
Kansas Collection, University of Kansas
"Becky Harvey" is listed in the 1865 census as 35 years old,
Maria's peer in age. Rebecca Brooks Harvey came to Lawrence from Arkansas
a year after Maria. Married, she fared better & left more of a mark.
