Louisiana Quilts Part 2

Cammie G Henry collection at Northwestern State University in Louisiana

Louisiana woman airing a quilt outside a log cabin, 20th century photo (?)

The house looks much like the "African House" at Melrose Plantation historic site

owned by Cammie Henry. 

The woman in the photograph might have been 

Clementine Hunter (1887-1988), artist-in-residence there, 

who made many quilts but was most famous for her paintings.

Louisiana may suffer as Pennsylvania does with such an abundance of quilts, cultures and quiltmaking traditions that it's difficult to summarize the state's quiltmaking history. Nobody has tried to write a comprehensive book on the topic.

Strip quilt, Cloaner Smith of Lisbon, Claiborne Parish

Louisiana Folklife Program

Louisiana folklorists have conducted projects, most notably the Louisiana Folklife Program's wide-ranging quilt documentation conducted by Susan Roach-Lankford.

Scroll down to read about it.

http://www.louisianafolklife.org/lt/virtual_books/guide_to_state/crafts.html

Friendship quilt signed by 42 women, family date: 1893,

 Shongaloo in Claiborne County up by Arkansas---the Ark-La-Tex region.

From the quilt project.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1B-3A-4A8

Dale Drake who did quilt research in the state noted "the Louisiana documentation project covered the northern (American) half of the state plus the southeast edge - New Orleans." Her own research in the Southern region was published in Uncoverings 2017, "Louisiana Acadian Cotonnade Quilts: Preserving the Weaving Heritage of a People."

Cotonnade Quilt

"The cotonnade quilts I researched did not predate around 1890, as a guess, but quilts ARE mentioned in probate records. It's a great research project for someone who lives closer than Indiana."

http://www.louisianafolklife.org/main_program_intro.html

The Louisiana project photographed four quilts made by Marie DuBois, born 1916, Jackson Parish in northern Louisiana.

Marie's quilts: classic Southern quilts from the 1880-1930 period.

Gaye Ingram, who lives in the area has been our resource on Louisiana culture. She commented on the settlement patterns and likelihood to cross state lines there. 

"This area has a fair number of quilts that came from East Texas. Oil and gas industry and large timber operations created some booms that drew people. I know one quilt that went to TX German settlements from North Carolina, then to Webster-Claiborne parish in North LA (near Minden, a German commune settle originally)."

Why so few quilts before 1870?

"You have to have people before they can make quilts. And the northern part of the state settled late and is still far behind population of Southern part."

Squash Blossom

In 1949 Maude Reid of Lake Charles showed some of her

quilts to a photographer.

Lake Charles is in southern Louisiana.

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1B-3A-7DE

1930s description of quilting patterns remembered from the 1890s,

Bogalusa, north of New Orleans along the 

Mississippi River in Washington County

http://www.npshistory.com/publications/jela/eo-1996.pdf

Satin wholecloth quilt purchased from Mrs. Hyde of Crowley, Louisiana

for a 1936 wedding. Mrs. Hyde was 

"an early widow, made quilts as a way to add income."

http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=1B-3A-7DE

Waldvogel Collection, Quilt Index

I bet this is Celia Pardue Hyde (1881-1972) of Crowley, who won a regional prize with her "Louisiana Rose" quilt at the 1933 World's Fair Quilt Contest sponsored by Sears, Roebuck & Company. Crowley is in Acadia Parish between Lafayette and Lake Charles. Based on her name we can guess Cecelia Pardue may have enjoyed a little Acadian heritage.

Our Facebook group has been a great resource for information about Louisiana culture and quilts.

Matt Macomber posted a picture of a terrific

top he found in Shreveport (1950s-'60s?)

Bill Volckening bought this one from a Louisiana source on ebay,

polyester double-knits with black rick-rack covering the seam lines.

It's 112" x 120". 

Gaye posted her Seven Sisters with classic

fan quilting from that area. Seven stars in a circle seems to be a 

Southern regionalism.

Alden O'Brien and Gaye discussed this quilt in the collection of the D.A.R. Museum, attributed to Mrs. Hornsby of Louisiana. Alden found quite a bit about Almira Crossgrove Hornsby (?-1918) who is found in censuses in Concordia Parish, Louisiana and in Mississippi. Was it a Louisiana quilt or a Mississippi quilt?

Gaye had some insight:

"Concordia Parish is across the river from Natchez. A number of planter families lived in 'town' houses in Natchez, which sits high on a bluff and was relatively healthier in Yellow Fever season, and had their growing fields/plantations across the river in the low lands of Concordia and nearby parishes. The name of one such area house---"Propinquity"---sez it all. Natchez was/is 'town' for both sides of the river."

So the Hornsbys probably moved seasonally from state to state showing us why state lines do not define culture. 

As Alden wrote:

"Ahhhh thank you, see, this is why it's so great to get nationally diverse people thinking together and sharing! I would not have that local info."

Gaye spent some time giving us an overview of Louisiana settlement. Since patterns of culture are so important to quilt history we'll give you her thoughts in full:

"Southwest Louisiana (the original Acadian settlement) was French-speaking into the the early 1950's. It was commonplace to be in a store and hear a conversation between a daughter who spoke both English and French and her mother, who spoke only French. Large parts of that culture were isolated and traditional even then. Dale Drake's research documents the cotonade quilts from that section.

Louisiana's historical settlement pattern was not what one often sees---an even sort of spread from a central commercial area. The early French settlements occurred in New Orleans area and along the Ms and Red Rivers. Military posts were located early in the French period at Alexandria (Rapides Post) and Natchitoches (Natchitoches Post), establishing an avenue of French and later Spanish culture.

1810

But most of the Anglo part of the state was settled only after the close of the Revolutionary War, with the opening of the Mississippi Territory, which included present-day Alabama. The southern part of that area had been held or contended by Spain. The Treaty of San Lorenzo (1795) recognized the 31st parallel as the boundary between Spanish Florida and the United States. It opened the way for American settlement north of that line after years of disagreement. It was not until 1798, however, that Spain actually vacated the area.

The Great Migration into the MS Territory occurred in 2 great waves. The first (between 1798 and 1812) brought 35,000 people into the Territory. Problems with the Creek Indians, which began as tribal wars, spread into the American settlement and raged throughout the region in 1813 and 1814, ending only with Jackson's victory at Horseshoe Bend in March 1814. That opened the area to settlement. 

https://medium.com/s/balkanized-america/the-11-nations-of-america-as-told-by-dna-f283d4c58483

Most of Central and North Louisiana was settled after 1815, when MS became a state. Settlers came mainly through the MS Territory from the Carolinas. Those following the coastal plain route moved through Amite and Covington Counties in MS, thence north and crossed the MS River near Natchez. Others came through the more northerly route and crossed at Vicksburg. Except for those along major waterways, most were barely established before the Civil War. 

The really fine early Louisiana quilts I've seen were made in the Carolinas. I have two with provenance from 1870's from S.C. and I know two in Central Louisiana from 1850's with Alabama provenance. While there are exceptions, especially along the rivers, the Anglo parts of the state did not develop the large leisured class that tends to produce really fine quiltmaking such as one sees in parts of the Carolinas and Virginia.

Then came the Civil War, and many of those along rivers were destroyed or taken by troops of both sides. Families have many stories about those. In my family a fragment of a quilt from that period exists.

Another thing that I believe reduced the number of fine quilts in Anglo Louisiana was that the major occupation in much of that section was the forestry industry, which kept people on the move. St. Louis and Chicago investors swept through the pine woods, clean-cutting and then moving on.

As for early Arkansas quilts, their makers most likely came either from and through TN. That migration tended to come from the Middle-South.