Tennessee to Missouri #4: Rhea County Style

 

Quilt passed down in the Gillenwaters/Brown family

who came to Cass County, Missouri in 1842.

The last three posts have been about this intriguing quilt

and a similar bedcover in the same family collection.

See the 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
https://quilthistorysouth.blogspot.com/2020/11/tennessee-to-missouri-3-who-stitched.html

As noted, the two Missouri quilts have a good deal in common, complicated pieced pattern alternating with plain white blocks, similar fabrics, stuffed work in the white squares and a fringed edge.

Stories in the Stitches: Quilts from the Cass County 

Quilt Documentation Project by Jenifer Dick, Carol Bohl, 

Linda Hammontree & Janice Britz.

They've been discussed in the Cass County book, attributed to Maria Rodgers Martin pictured above. Maria does not appear to have been a seamstress of any note, so the attribution is questionable. Our better understanding of regional differences in quilt style also leads us away from Missouri and back to Tennessee, the home before 1842 of Maria and the people who held her as a slave.

Now it may be that other women at the Brown house in Missouri stitched these quilts in the 1840s or '50s. Two older, unnamed African-American women lived in slavery there according to the 1850 slave schedule, as did matriarch Elizabeth (Roddye) Gillenwaters who died in her early '50s in 1851. Elizabeth's only daughter Mary Roddye Gillenwaters Brown (1819-1890) might have done the work, being in her thirties during the 1850s when this type of quilt was fashionable. 

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/8255100/elizabeth-gillenwaters

Stuffed quilting links the Missouri quilts to Rhea County, Tennessee,

home of the Gillenwaters, Browns and Maria Rodgers Martin.

However, we doubt (Merikay & I) that these are Missouri quilts. 

Thirty five years ago quilt researchers in Tennessee were surprised to find so many stuffed work quilts in Rhea County. Merikay Waldvogel pointed out the connection between the Tennessee and Missouri styles.

Among the Tennessee findings were two closely related quilts with feathered stars, stuffing, fringe and one with the same zig-zag border

And another Oakleaf/Turkey Tracks design.

Victoria Darwin Caldwell's descendants called the pattern Turkey Tracks

and told the story that this quilt was hidden under the floorboards in their home

in Spring City, Rhea County during the Civil War.

Victoria Darwin Caldwell (1839-1919)

She had 12 children, 11 of them still living in 1900.

She must have been named for Queen Victoria, crowned in 1838.

Her quilt is pictured in Southern Quilts: Surviving Relics of the Civil War

where Bets Ramsey & Merikay estimated the date as late 1850s.

The Tennessee State Museum has this quilt dated 1808 by

Rebekah Foster in their collection.

Fancy, stuffed work quilting is a clue to a pre-Civil War quilt, but a surprising thing about the Rhea County findings was how late some of the stuffed quilts seemed to be.

Quilt attributed to Eliza West Cash (1825-1896),

Spring City, Rhea County, Tennessee.

If we dated these quilts on overall style, comparing

them to stuffed-work quilts in the rest of the country

we'd say: Before the Civil War.

But fabrics and Rhea County family histories are not always consistent with that date.

A second quilt by Eliza West Cash from the Tennessee Project

Pieced of an indigo print and a little pink, stuffed work quilting

in alternate blocks. Very hard to date. Only one print.....

Quilt attributed to Mary Ann Walker Trentham (1857-1920) and sister-in-law

Nancy Jane Trentham (who "helped with the quilting.")

All solids, Turkey red, chrome orange and a light blue.

Trentham family stories recalled the child's hands on the left side as being traced from 1-year-old Nannie's. 

Nancy Rebecca Trentham was born in 1880 so the quilt is dated to 1881.

She lived until 1955 and may have been the source of the quilt's history.

Nanny's quilt has the same unusual pattern of a stuffed

feather in the sashing---a feather swoop between the blocks,

the same design seen in Eliza West Cash's quilt above and in the floral vase below.

Quilt attributed to Rilda Smith Rector (1848-1930)

Her grave:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/117628382/sarrilabeth-c.-rector

The only date-inscribed Rhea County quilt found in the Tennessee project

is this pink and red one attributed to Eleanor Wilson Broyles with "Enoch '86" in

the quilting.

The pattern, a Triple Irish Chain, was quite popular around

the country in the 1880s---but the stuffed quilting rarely found anywhere

but Rhea County that late.

The stuffed, gridded basket is seen in variations.

Adelia Gillespie Darwin 's feathered star with basket

similar to the Cass County feathered star.

Tennessee State Museum

Adelia's quilt is remarkably like the Cass County quilt.

Another Feathered Star attributed to Elizabeth Brabson Smith, wife of a Roddy who stayed behind in Rhea County, related to the Roddyes who moved to Missouri.

 Elizabeth (Betsy) Brabson Smith Roddy (1823-1902),

perhaps soon after her 1842 wedding,  from a lengthy 1935 article on

 Roddy genealogy in the Chattanooga Times

With husband David Mahaffe Roddy (1810-1885), Betsy had eight children between 1845 and 1862, one of whom she named Mary Jane Roddy. 

The younger Mary Roddy Brown from the Chattanooga Times.

This Mary Jane Roddy (1847-1909) married a man named Brown, so we have two Mary Jane Roddy Browns, one in Missouri and a younger one in Rhea County. Coincidences abound.

The red star quilt has remained in the family.

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=22-18-2015

The Missouri Feathered Star

This Roddy family were also well-to-do slave holders; the 1860 slave schedule lists 30 people at their home in Roddy Station, Tennessee: 11 females.

A few months after the Civil War began David Roddy

was selling off some Smith family slaves.

Betsy Roddy's husband was undoubtedly related to the Missouri Roddys. David Mahaffe Roddy of Tennessee and Elizabeth Roddy Gillenwaters of Missouri are descended from English-born Jesse Roddy who fought in the Revolutionary War in North Carolina.

It also seems likely that the pair of Missouri quilts were made in Rhea County, Missouri and taken or sent to Cass County, Missouri. Did they make that trip before the Civil War? It's possible, but based on the quilt style, doubtful. Family surely communicated and traveled after 1865 when elegant quilts might have been welcomed at the Brown house in Missouri, raided several times during the war.

Tennessee to Missouri #3: Who Stitched the Stuffed-Work Quilts?

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.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/159974339/harry-e-hayward

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 

https://www.kshs.org/publicat/history/2008autumn_armitage.pdf

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.

Tennessee to Missouri #2: Maria Rodgers Martin

 

Maria Jane Rodgers Martin (1831-1922)

By the fringe of bangs and dress style we might

guess this photo was taken about 1870 when Maria

was in her late thirties.

We looked at the stuffed work quilts in the collection of Wayside Rest in Cass County, Missouri, at least one of which has been attributed to Maria Jane Rodgers Martin, a woman enslaved first in Tennessee, brought to Missouri and then to Lawrence, Kansas during the Civil War.

Family who passed on the quilts also passed on the

story that Maria stitched this one.

See the post here:

https://quilthistorysouth.blogspot.com/2020/11/tennessee-to-missouri-1-regional-style.html

Here is another snapshot of Maria in Lawrence from the 1900 census when she was 68 years old.

In June she is listed as widowed, renting a house, and apparently living alone in an integrated neighborhood. Like many former slaves she'd never learned to read or write. She had given birth to eight children but only three were living at the time. She was born in April, 1832 and knew her father was born in Tennessee and her mother in Virginia. 

The 1865 state census found two similar Maria Martins in Lawrence. One, listed as 38, is doing somewhat better than the other: A few months after the end of the Civil War, she is heading her own household with three children Minerva, Henry and Elmore. They are the only people of color in their immediate neighborhood. This Maria supports them with "Washing & Ironing" and she has assets worth $25.

The other Maria Martin at 35 also does Washing & Ironing, but she lives in a mostly Black neighborhood and is listed as a Pauper. Her three children are Elmira, Charles and Benjamin ages 14 to 4. 

The second, very poor Maria looks like the woman we are searching for. Her son Benjamin (1859-1886), born in Missouri, grew up to be a blacksmith back in Harrisonville where he and Maria are buried in the Brown family cemetery at Wayside Rest. Of course, these may be the same woman, living one place when the census taker called one day and in another later the same month. 

Maria Rodgers Martin lived to be 91, dying in 1922.

See her grave:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/maria-jane-martin

Maria was born in slavery in Tennessee in 1831 or 1832 to people owned by William Gillenwaters, a prosperous farmer in Rhea County. In 1842 Gillenwaters bought land in Missouri and moved his family and enslaved workers west. The family included wife Elizabeth Roddye Gillenwaters, their only (?) child Mary Roddye Gillenwaters Brown, her husband Robert Allison Brown and their three children. Family history recalled that "thirty-odd servants" came to Missouri.

Allison Fasching, a Gillenwaters descendant, cites Robert Brown III's family story of the trip by river ending at the Missouri River port of Lexington, Missouri, followed by an overland trip "over 'considerable' parts of western Missouri" in fall, 1842 when Maria was about 10 or 11.

 

Names were not listed.

Twelve years later the 1850 census counted 33 slaves on the Gillenwaters/Brown farm, most were young---only one woman was older than 40. Thirteen were old enough to have come from Tennessee. Most were men; only one female might have been Maria, a 19 year old "M" for mulatto, reflecting her fair color.

Cass County library photo of the house in the 1880s

In 1850 only three enslaved women 42, 35 and 19, lived at Wayside Rest. The young men probably worked the mills and the farms that grew hemp for rope.

Recent photo of Wayside Rest house by William Fischer, Jr.

The farm eventually encompassed 2,300 acres and a substantial brick house that still stands. A steam saw and grist mill supplied lumber and food for the farm and neighbors.

Forty years ago when the site was placed on the

National Register of Historic Places the remains

of some slave housing were photographed.

Restored today. 

Did Maria live out on the grounds or in the main

house where she is said to have been in charge of the

Brown children?

Although period documents refer to William Gillenwaters

as plantation head, slave holder, etc. he has been edited out of 

family stories. He died in Texas in 1865 just after the war was over.

Wife Elizabeth had died in 1851 at Wayside Rest.

Maria's Civil War story as generally told indicates she went to Lawrence, Kansas with her children in January or February, 1862 after being freed by Kansas soldiers under the command of Colonel Charles R. Jennison. 

Charles Jennison (1834-1884) was an official Union 

soldier for 7 months during the early years of the 

Civil War, mustered out in May, 1862

I found no stories of people leaving Missouri with Union troops in February but a few weeks earlier in January, 1862 newspapers all over the world printed accounts of  “Jennison’s Jayhawkers,” as the 7th Kansas Cavalry was known, freeing Missourians in the areas west of Kansas City.

"In Jackson and Cass counties...70 farm houses...have been destroyed," according to an article in a London, England newspapers. The flurry of January newsprint about Jennison can only be attributable to a skillful publicist (Jennison himself?) Jennison's erratic behavior was displeasing his superiors and one might wonder if he decided to fight disapproval with public opinion praising his raids.

In February, 1862 Jennison's troops had been in Humboldt, Kansas, for a month according to Lt. Colonel Daniel Anthony's letters to his family including sister Susan B. Anthony. Jennison wasn't well. In May, "We have had blustering times. Jennison resigned." He was reinstated, but not for long. The Seventh went east to Kentucky without him. Later in the war he led another Union regiment but was court-martialed for war crimes and dishonorably discharged. After the war he became a politician representing Leavenworth.

Lt. Snoddy, under Jennison, brought forty slaves into Lawrence in January, possibly the group that Maria traveled with.

A piece from an anonymous correspondent in a Brooklyn, New York paper in January, 1862 tells us Jennison was supposedly giving $25 to refugees while cotton prints were selling for 15 to 17 cents in Lawrence. One hundred thirty scholars were said to be attending a special school for freed people.

Lawrence, rebuilt after the Civil War. 

As usual, no parking spots on Mass St., too many cows.

Once in Lawrence, Maria is reported to have been employed as Jennison's laundry worker but the never-married Jennison lived in Leavenworth when he wasn't in the field. Another possible employer was General James Lane, who did live in Lawrence with wife Mary and his family.

Mary Baldridge Lane (1826-1883) by the Brady Studios

 Perhaps Maria and Mary Baldridge Lane were acquainted.

The Kansas "Jayhawkers" swept through Cass County several times. Harrisonville is only 20 miles or so from the state line.

Elizabeth Gillenwaters Brown, a 14-year-old living at Wayside Rest, recalled seeing smoke from a skirmish north of Harrisonville as she stood on the balcony in front of the house in July, 1861. The ease with which the Kansans rode into the area probably motivated the Gillenwaters and Brown to remove their greatest wealth, the African-American people, south to Texas. Apparently Lizzie's grandfather William Gillenwalters and her brother John took them to the Dallas, Texas area, where John was killed in an accident in 1864. William never returned either and died there soon after the war.

Was Maria's husband Fred Martin taken to Texas? She and her children remained.

Elizabeth Gillenwaters Brown married Henry Clay Daniel in 1868

Lizzie remembered another encounter with Jennison's troops in December, 1861, while Maria was still at Wayside Rest.

"Every day some of the [Kansas] men came to the house to take whatever they pleased from the outbuildings. On Christmas day, just about mealtime, three men rode up and father gave them, as usual, a cordial invite to dine. They raved over the dinner and wondered why there was so much silver. The Lieutenant said some of the boys were hard and might take it, but father said, 'No, the boys are in and out all the time and are well behaved.' They left late and headed toward town.

"At about midnight, there was a heavy knock on the door. Mother answered while father dressed and got his pistol, for he had begun to smell a mouse. The caller said through the door that he was a friend and asked to see Mr. Brown. Father turned to mother and said, 'Go ring the bell' and that frightened them so the men turned to go. Father watched through the sidelight then one of the men fired hitting the right side of the door." [Bullet hole remains today beside the front door.]

The elder Robert Allison Brown years after the war.

The family stories tell us the house was raided 11 times during the war.

Collection of Wayside Rest

Robert Allison Brown II (1844-1928) with wife Kentucky-born

Mary Agnes Stephens Brown (1850-1932)

 and five of their nine children, about 1897.

The youngest on her rocking horse is Agnes Nelson Brown

 Hamilton (1895-1982) who lived here all her life.

Collection of the Kansas State Historical Society

Living in Lawrence, Maria lived through a retaliatory raid in 1863 when Missourians under William Quantrill executed nearly 200 men. An 1891 list of survivors includes Maria Martin & Henry Martin (#8 & 37.) This Maria may have been the slightly older Maria---or maybe there was only one.

See Daniel Anthony's letters from Kansas to his family including Susan B.

https://kslib.info/DocumentCenter/View/6807/Kansas-Historical-Quarterly?bidId=

One other thing:

I had in my files of women's dress style this woman from an unknown source---Doesn't she look exactly like Maria? Maybe a few years younger.

One face laid atop the other.

I have no idea where I found the photo and a Google Image

search only finds me as a source.

Next Post: Did Maria make that quilt?

Allison Fasching's post on her family history:

http://www.allisonfasching.com/family-history.html