Facts & Fabrications-Unraveling the History of Quilts & Slavery: 8 Projects - 20 Blocks - First-Person Accounts - Barbara Brackm

Text and Artwork © 2006 by Barbara Brackman Artwork © C&T Publishing Publisher: Amy Marson Editorial Director: Gailen Runge Acquisitions Editor: Jan Grigsby Editor: Deb Rowden Technical Editors: Robyn Gronning, Cynthia Keyes Hilton Copyeditor/Proofreader: Wordfirm Inc. Design Director/Cover & Book Designer: Christina D. Jarumay Illustrator: Tim Manibusan Production Assistant: Matt Allen Photography: studio shots by Jon Blumb, landscape shots by Barbara Brackman Published by C&T Publishing, Inc., P.O. Box 1456, Lafayette, CA 94549 Front cover: Checkedy Cloth Sampler designed by Barbara Brackman, pieced by Pamela Mayfield, machine quilted by Rosie Mayhew Back cover: Star of Africa pieced by Barbara Brackman, machine quilted by Pamela Mayfield All rights reserved. No part of this work covered by the copyright hereon may be used in any form or reproduced by any means—graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or information storage and retrieval systems—without written permission of the publisher. The copyrights on individual artworks are retained by the artists as noted in Barbara Brackman’s Facts & Fabrications: Unraveling the History of Quilts and Slavery. These designs may be used to make items only for personal use or donations to nonprofit groups for sale. Each piece of finished merchandise for sale must carry a conspicuous label with the following information: Designs © 2006 by Barbara Brackman from the book Barbara Brackman’s Facts & Fabrications: Unraveling the History of Quilts and Slavery from C&T Publishing, Inc.

Attention Copy Shops: Please note the following exception—publisher and author give permission to photocopy pages 25, 26, 27, 30, 36, 42, 50, 54, 60, 66, 82, 95, and 102 for personal use only. Attention Teachers: C&T Publishing, Inc., encourages you to use this book as a text for teaching. Contact us at 800-284-1114 or www.ctpub.com for more information about the C&T Teachers Program. We take great care to ensure that the information included in our books is accurate and presented in good faith, but no warranty is provided nor results guaranteed. Having no control over the choices of materials or procedures used, neither the author nor C&T Publishing, Inc., shall have any liability to any person or entity with respect to any loss or damage caused directly or indirectly by the information contained in this book. For your convenience, we post an up- to-date listing of corrections on our website (www.ctpub.com). If a correction is not already noted, please contact our customer service department at ctinfo@ctpub.com or at P.O. Box 1456, Lafayette, CA 94549. Trademark (™) and registered trademark (®) names are used throughout this book. Rather than use the symbols with every occurrence of a trademark or registered trademark name, we are using the names only in the editorial fashion and to the benefit of the owner, with no intention of infringement. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Brackman, Barbara. Barbara Brackman’s facts & fabrications: unraveling the history of quilts and slavery : 8 projects - 20 blocks - first-person accounts / Barbara Brackman. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN-13: 978-1-57120-364-9 (paper trade : alk. paper) ISBN-10: 1-57120-364-8 (paper trade : alk. paper) 1. Quilting--Patterns. 2. Patchwork--Patterns. 3. Slavery–Southern States– History. I. Title. II. Title: Barbara Brackman’s facts and fabrications. III. Title: Facts & fabrications. TT835.B638 2006 746.46′041--dc22

2006013689 Printed in China 1098765432

Acknowledgments Thanks, as always, to photographer Jon Blumb, who took the studio photographs, and to editor Deb Rowden, who shaped the book into final form. I am always indebted to the women who sew the quilts, especially Jean Stanclift and Pam Mayfield, who take my designs and add their own sense of order and taste to some rather sketchy ideas. I taught this book as a class at Prairie Point Quilts in Shawnee, Kansas, and I am grateful to the students who finished projects in time for photography. Without them, there would be no book. Thanks to Gloria Clark, Barbara Fife, Carol Kirchhoff, Dorothy LeBoeuf, Paula Mariedaughter, Linda Birch Mooney, Ilyse Moore, Mary Louise Pick, Jeanne Poore, Diane Weber, Jean Wells, and Lavon Wynn and to other friends who loaned quilts to be included. I spent two years reading first-person accounts and looking at photographs to educate myself about slavery and African-American history. I am grateful to the many librarians, archivists, and museum personnel who have collected the material and made it available. The book wouldn’t have been possible without the Library of Congress online archive. It is indeed a national treasure. And thanks to my friend Cuesta Benberry, who got me interested in the topic. When I write, she is always the reader I have in mind.

contents CHAPTER 1: FACTS AND FABRICATIONS A Time Line of Slavery and Freedom: 1619–1964 CHAPTER 2: QUILTS AND SLAVERY: A HISTORICAL SEARCH CHAPTER 3: SAMPLERS AND QUILTS RECALLING SLAVERY DAYS project: Checkedy Cloth Sampler project: Star Sampler CHAPTER 4: THE BLOCKS BLOCK 1: Chained Star project: Star of Africa BLOCK 2: Lost Ship BLOCK 3: Cotton Boll BLOCK 4: Cabin Windows BLOCK 5: Slave Chain BLOCK 6: Christmas Star BLOCK 7: Triple Link Chain BLOCK 8: Charm BLOCK 9: Aunt Dinah BLOCK 10: Creole Puzzle BLOCK 11: Jacob’s Ladder project: Climbing Jacob’s Ladder

BLOCK 12: Catch Me If You Can project: Sweet Canaan BLOCK 13: Underground Railroad project: Follow the Drinking Gourd BLOCK 14: Trip Around the World BLOCK 15: Box Quilt BLOCK 16: North Star BLOCK 17: Beauregard Surrounded project: Beauregard Surrounded BLOCK 18: Lincoln’s Platform BLOCK 19: Birds in the Air BLOCK 20: Rocky Road to Kansas CHAPTER 5: ADAPTING THE SAMPLER FOR CHILDREN project: Underground Railroad Doll Quilt The Endnotes About the Author The Index

CHAPTER 1 Facts and Fabrications This book is based on facts and fabrications. The historical facts are the story of American slavery, told through the words of people who lived through that national shame. The fabrications are the symbolism I’ve attached to traditional American quilt patterns to tell the story. The link between quilts and our Civil War has long been an interest of mine. I’ve written histories about quilts that were used to raise money for the Union and the Confederacy, quilts that generated funds and sympathy for the abolitionist cause, and quilts used as expressions of political opinion. This book focuses on a thread of Civil War history—the story of slavery and emancipation.1 While we must take many things on faith—miracles, placebos, and the endurance of true love—history requires evidence. For historical evidence, we can look to personal accounts written at the time, such as diaries and letters recording immediate events. We can also read memoirs told long after the fact, written words such as autobiographies, or interviews by people who lived through the era. Published records, such as newspaper accounts and military records, add pieces to the puzzle, as do objects like surviving quilts, which can tell us much about fabric, fashion, and women’s interests. Historians require more than one fragment of evidence to support a fact. Oral traditions—for example, family stories— require the support of other types of evidence or numerous renditions of the same story from different sources. A family story that a quilt was made by a plantation’s slave is more credible if census records indicate the woman lived with that family. A tale that a quilt was buried to protect it from General William Sherman’s army has more authority if we find similar tales in other families. Historians realize each source has limitations. A newspaper story is often colored by sensationalism or censorship; a memoir, by faulty memory or self- inflation; a diary, by bigotry or paranoia; and an interview, by miscommunication or lack of rapport.

Photographs are important historical documents, but pictures of African- American women living in slavery are hard to find. Their lives after the Civil War, however, are well-documented. Here, a group of women, possibly the daughters of former slaves, meet in a needlework society, about 1920. Photograph courtesy of Terry Clothier Thompson. History, then, is puzzle solving, assembling evidence to create a picture of the past. Historians who sift evidence are often frustrated by lively stories that pass for history. A classic example is the tale of Betsy Ross stitching our first flag by cutting a simple star. This myth about the flag’s origins is repeated in classrooms every year, despite historians’ conviction that the tale is based on nothing more than a single dubious source. We have no historical evidence—no firstperson accounts, no memoir of anyone who witnessed the event, and no actual flag to back it up. Betsy Ross did indeed exist, but the only indication she made a flag for George Washington is a story told a century later by her grandson.2 George Washington’s own classic myth, his childhood confession about chopping a cherry tree, was the brainchild of one biographer who mixed fact and fiction with abandon. Despite the obvious lack of historical evidence, cherry trees and hatchets continue to symbolize Washington in the American heart.

Facts & Fabrications-Unraveling the History of Quilts & Slavery: 8 Projects - 20 Blocks - First-Person Accounts - Barbara Brackm

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