Stuffed-work quilting in a feathered star quilt
attributed to an enslaved seamstress named Maria Rogers Martin (1831-1922)
in Cass County, Missouri.
The story of this quilt and another attributed to her is remarkable. Maria was one of about 50 slaves at a plantation in western Missouri named Wayside Rest owned by Robert & Mary Roddye Gillenwaters Brown. In 1862 Union troops from Kansas raided Harrisonville and brought Maria and others (was Maria a willing escapee or abducted?) to the free-state capitol of Lawrence. She is said to have worked as a servant in the homes of Jayhawk leaders James H. Lane and Charles Jennison, only returning to Missouri in 1900.
We are going to look at the quilts and Maria's story, beginning with the quilts.
Feathered Star quilt
The quilts attributed to Maria are discussed in Stories in the Stitches: Quilts from the Cass County Quilt Documentation Project by Jenifer Dick, Carol Bohl, Janice Britz and Linda Hammontree.
The Cass County Library has an exhibit panel on her story and in Lawrence, Kansas, where she lived much of her life, she has been the subject of Marla Jackson's research in her quilt classes.
The second quilt is not as easy to study from the photo.
Pattern looks like a relatively common variation of
the pieced reel or oak leaf design---it may
be pieced and appliqued.
The pair have much in common and may be the work of one woman (or one team of women.)
Each is pieced in a rather sophisticated design requiring needlework skills. Each is edged with a fringe, a technique that fell out of fashion after the Civil War. Each looks to be pieced of indigo blue prints with a Turkey red (possibly faded to pink) or a pink print. Plain white alternate blocks show off the quilting.
The quilting---also remarkable---is
stuffed with extra cotton behind in a floral basket design
(called trapunto today.)
The look is unusual but familiar to Tennessee quilt historian Merikay Waldvogel who immediately wondered if the quiltmaker did not have a connection to Rhea County, Tennessee where many stuffed quilts in this style survive. (Pronounced Ray County)
Similar quilt attributed to Victoria Darwin Caldwell (1839-1919)
Rhea County, Tennessee, on display at the Tennessee State Museum
last year.
Mary Roddye Gillenwaters Brown and her parents came to Missouri from Rhea County, Tennessee. Her father, born in Spartanburg, South Carolina, had long been a Rhea County resident where he was a county commissioner in the 1830s.
Rhea County's 1840 census lists 4 "Free White Persons" in William T. Gillenwaters's family,
parents and two adolescents; daughter Mary is the young female. Who the young man was remains
a mystery as Mary seems to have been their only child.
The Missouri quilts are so much like quilts found in Rhea County that the stylistic link between them is not in doubt. The Cass County feathered star with its zig-zag pieced border and fringe has close relatives in the Tennessee quilts listed in the Quilt Index.
but has the same zig-zag border and alternate stuffed work blocks featuring a floral basket.
The Oak Leaf has at least one Tennessee twin, this one attributed again to
Victoria Darwin Caldwell.
From the Quilts of Tennessee book by Bets Ramsey & Merikay Waldvogel:
"The survey team saw a few elaborately stuffed quilts on earlier quilt days. After documenting sixty-six quilts in Dayton [Rhea County]....and finding twenty of them to be stuffed, we declared Rhea County to be the stuffing capital of Tennessee."[if not the world.]
Dayton is the county seat; Spring City the next largest
community
In 1850 Rhea County had about 4,400 inhabitants, a rather stable number. Ten years later there were 4,377 white people and 615 slaves. In such a small community one would imagine that many of the quiltmakers were related, with names like Roddy and Darwin recurring.
Next post: The quiltmakers.
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