Washington Whirlwind #5: Road to the White House

 

Washington Whirlwind #5: 

Road to the White House by Jeanne Arnieri

After Abraham Lincoln was elected the family closed their Illinois house and made plans to travel to Washington in the spring of 1861. Their Road to the White House was complicated by hate-filled rhetoric from Southern "Fire-Eaters" threatening to kill the president-elect on his trip east. Several body guards and Pinkerton's detectives accompanied the Lincolns on the train ride as did a few young men whom Lincoln had befriended in his legal and political life. Three close friends were on the train.

1863 Alexander Gardner Photograph 

John Nicolay & John Hay were Illinois newspapermen

 appointed Lincoln's secretaries. Moustaches and beards 

became the fashion in the early 1860s and Lincoln showed

 up in Washington with a new beard.

"To Gardner's Gallery & were soon joined by Nico and the Prest . ... Nico & I immortalized ourselves by having ourselves done in a group with the Prest." John Hay, November, 1863.

Ephraim Elmer Ellsworth 1837-1861

Also in the entourage was New Yorker Elmer Ellsworth, about 24, who'd been studying law with Lincoln in Springfield. Ellsworth was a charismatic character who'd created a military drill team in Chicago. Appointed (self-appointed?) a Colonel, he popularized the Zouave uniform developed by African/French troops, consisting of a fez, baggy trousers and a good deal of soutache or flat braid trim. 

Ellsworth's Zouave Drill Book, published

in 1861.

New York Zouaves

When the war began Ellsworth established the 11th New York Fire Zouaves.

Medhurst & Company

17-year-old James Rockwell of Duryéa's Zouaves in the distinctive outfit.

The Zouave jacket became female fashion.

Detail of a wool Zouave quilt in the Museum of Fine Arts/Boston collection

https://collections.mfa.org/objects/653652

Road to the White House by Becky Brown

Harper's Weekly

During the spring of 1861 as Virginians argued secession, hotel keeper James W. Jackson flew a large Confederate flag from atop Alexandria's Marshall House, so large it was visible from the White House. John Hay recorded an April 29th visit to Nicolay's bedroom from Kansas Senator James Lane who "was at the window filling his soul with gall by steady telescopic contemplating of a Secession flag impudently flaunting over a roof in Alexandria." Lane suggested the flag be shot away. 

James William Jackson (1823-1861) of Virginia

Ellsworth, a frequent White House guest and a "great pet in the family," was also angered by the Secessionist taunt from across the Potomac.

May 24th, the day after Virginians voted to secede, Union troops occupied Alexandria, which was too close to the Union capitol to let it slip into the Confederacy. 

Alexandria

Elmer Ellsworth was among the occupiers who encountered little resistance. Feeling cocky he decided to take the Marshall House flag with backup from a few fellow soldiers. As he descended the stairs with the trophy in his hands, James Jackson shot and killed him. A fellow Zouave killed Jackson. This confrontation resulting in mutual destruction so early in the war became a rallying point for both Union and Confederates and a metaphor for what was to come.

Jackson left a wife and children. Ellsworth left his parents in New York and a bereft Lincoln family. 

The Harper's Weekly image became a propaganda icon....

Library of Congress

Ellsworth was given a memorial service at the White House with the Lincolns in tears. Julia Taft remembered that she with the Taft and Lincoln boys had visited Ellsworth to watch the Zouaves drill just the day before his death:

"I felt an impulse to tell the President about our pleasant visit to Colonel Ellsworth the day before he was ordered to Alexandria but I was told that the President wept at the mention of Ellsworth and I was afraid it would make him grieve.”

Road to the White House by Denniele Bohannon

The Block

This block composed of triangles and four-patches was popular in many shading arrangements. 

Made by Cora Myrtle Graham Boatwright, documented by the Arizona Project.

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=38-36-4389

Baltimore Album with Civil War Imagery from Debby Cooney

Elizabeth A. Chanceaulme Sutton's block in a rather late

 Baltimore Album quilt top with unusual Civil War imagery

As most BAQ's date from the 1840s & 1850s, Union slogans are unusual. Baltimore situated in a Union state during the war was not a Union stronghold, one reason besides timing that Baltimore albums with Union imagery are rare.

Debby Cooney is guest blogging today. As a leading expert on Baltimore Album quilts she recently wrote an analysis of this 1862 Baltimore Album quilt top for the Baltimore Applique Society, summarized here. Photos are from the Richard Opfer auction site where the top sold last October. It's now in the inventory of quilt dealer Stella Rubin, who graciously allowed Debby to study and photograph details of this important Civil War artifact.

We'll start by explaining the numbering system BAQ scholars use.

Each horizontal row is given a number; each vertical row a letter.

Elizabeth Sutton's block D3 proclaims “The Union Forever” 

embroidered on a red horseshoe strip enclosing a stuffed eagle

with a flag shield on the breast, holding a banner 

reading “United We Stand Divided We Fall.”

 Tri-color French liberty caps sit in both top corners.

From Debby's analysis:

This late Baltimore Album quilt top dated 1862 is the only one I know of that references the Civil War. Many blocks present martial imagery and wording that support the Union’s goals of keeping the states together and ending slavery. War motifs include U.S. flags, shields, eagles, drums, and liberty caps. Patriotic phrases are inked on several blocks. Others have adapted iconograph of the French revolution and its slogan Liberte, Fraternite, Egalite. 

C3

MW Sutton’s block exhibits a dramatic Baltimore clipper ship with red sails very similar to those seen on earlier BAQs. A striped U.S. shield sits in both upper corners. Below the ship’s hull is a patch of ocean in which embroidered red and white fish swim. The bottom of this strip is embroidered “U S Frigate Cumberland M W Sutton.” Embroidered cherry trees lie around and beneath the ship. The USS Cumberland was a 50-gun sailing frigate of the U.S. Navy, the first ship sunk by the Confederate ironclad CSS Virginia in the battle of Hampton Roads on March 8, 1862.

Blocks featured in the center are made with a good deal of embroidery that appears to be the work of one person or others with a similar style. 

Signed by a younger daughter of Martin Chanceaulme,

Susanna C. Chanceaulme Carlton Ensor's block is an 

embroidered lattice basket holding stuffed & embroidered

 calico fruit surrounded by an open wreath of berries &

 leaves with her stenciled name below.

Many of the names are Chanceaulme, all likely related to Martin Chanceaulme (1788-1863). He was born in France, emigrated to Haiti and then to the U.S. before 1819, when he married Philadelphian Susanna Hamlet (1796-1859). In the early 1820s they moved to Baltimore where Martin worked as a cabinetmaker and wood carver until his death. Several of their children and relatives contributed the central nine blocks. Four of the red and green blocks include names of women of two families with husbands in the woodworking trades, which may be their connection to the Chanceaulmes.

Motifs in the outer rows are made largely with red and green calico prints and solids.

Signed S Chanceaulme, probably Sarah Ann (1841-1922) one of Martin’s younger daughters, this block exhibits crossed cannons surmounted by the U.S. striped shield surrounded by an open acorn wreath; her name is embroidered in a banner beneath the cannons. This construction resembles a poster circulated in 1792 after the French Revolution proclaiming “Unite et indivisibilite de la Republique: liberte egalite fraternite ou la mort" 1792” (Unity and indivisibility of the republic: liberty, equality, fraternity, or death).

M W Sutton’s block B3 shows a striped shield flanked by a U.S. flag on each side, surmounted by a Great Seal of Maryland figure topped by a liberty cap. Embroidered flowers and war trumpets sit in the corners, with the name in a banner beneath laurel leaves. M W Sutton probably was Elizabeth Sutton’s father-in-law Pvt. Mordecai Sutton (1779-1865), a veteran of the War of 1812, who fought in the Battle of Baltimore of September 12-15,1814, a crucial point in the war. American troops stopped a land and naval assault on the city during which Francis Scott Key wrote the poem that became our national anthem. As they aged, the battle’s survivors, including Sutton, were known and honored as the “Old Defenders.”

The red calico chains in the sashing appear in other Maryland album quilts, as does the simple vine and bud border.

Debby wrote much more about the genealogy and block imagery in her article for the Baltimore Applique Society's newsletter. You should probably join.

https://www.baltimoreapplique.com/

Kentucky Classic #2: Kentucky Wildflower for Caroline Amelia Moore

 

Kentucky Classic #2: Kentucky Wildflower

 for Caroline Amelia Moore

by Elsie Ridgley

The individual design units here, the conventional rose and simple leaves are planted in an absurdly small vase...something rather characteristic of these Garrard County quilts. We can see the design as a metaphor for Carry Moore Nation, a Garrard County native.

Attributed to Lucy Kemper West of Garrard County

DAR Museum

Overgrown plants in need of repotting are a Kentucky Classic theme

Caroline Moore Floyd Nation (1846-1911)

at 28 when she married for a second time in 1874.

Carrie Amelia Moore was born to George & Mary Campbell Moore in 1846 on their farm west of Bryantsville in Garrard County.

The cliffs at Dick's (Dix) River

Carry remembered the enslaved people on their Kentucky farm; Betsy, Mary, Judy and Eliza were the matriarchs.

1850 census showing mother Mary Jane at 26 with 7 children including 3-year-old Caroline.

Mary Jane James Campbell Moore (1824-1893).

Perhaps Edna on the left and Carrie on the right in the 1850s.

Mary gave birth to her last child in 1861 in Missouri.

George Moore (1815-1883)

Irish-born George Moore seems to have been rather restless, taking the family to other farms in Kentucky and moving them to Missouri in 1855 when Carry was 9. 

The Moore's home in Cass County, Missouri

Portal to Texas History 

Dr. Charles Gloyd (1840-1869)

After the Civil War Carry married Dr. Charles Gloyd a veteran of the 118th Ohio Volunteer Infantry  when she was in her early 20s. Traumatized by the war Gloyd was an alcoholic. Carry, pregnant with her only child Charlien, left him and Charles died within a year. His alcoholism prompted her to become the tavern keepers' foe thirty years later when she was known for smashing saloons.

Kansas Museum of History

Carry in jail in Topeka with a nine-patch quilt on the bed.

She began her hatcheting career in 1900 in her mid fifties, after the failure of her second marriage to David Nation. She traveled the country to make speeches and chop up bars and other furniture with her signature ax. 

Kansas Museum of History Collection

She was often jailed. Being an expert at calling attention to herself and her crusade she was frequently in the national papers in the first decade of the 20th century. Her ten years of notoriety ended when a nervous breakdown caused her hospitalization at the Evergreen Sanitarium in Leavenworth, Kansas.

She died there at 66 in 1911.

Unfortunately sanitariums were familiar territory to the Moores. Carry's mother Mary died in the mental hospital in Nevada, Missouri and her brothers Charles and Campbell are also buried in the hospital's cemetery. Carry's daughter Charlien Gloyd McNabb died in an asylum in Texas in 1929.

The Nevada Hospital for the Insane was the largest building in

Missouri for a time.

Women patients on an outing

Carry Moore Nation may have been technically insane, affected with a hereditary schizophrenia, psychosis or perhaps early-onset dementia. She was certainly eccentric. This Kentucky Wildflower remains one of Garrard County's most famous natives.

A little fancy cutting from Becky Brown

The Block

45" Square

No medallion set this month---here's the side-by-side set 

for nine 14/15-inch finished blocks. Look for the Beckys' progress in May.

Read Carry's surprisingly readable autobiography The Use and Need of the Life of Carry A. Nation, published in 1904.

https://books.google.com/books?id=K4U-AQAAMAAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=life+use+carry+nation&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwid083Fi9r_AhW1JH0KHTZwAeAQ6AF6BAgIEAI#v=onepage&q=life%20use%20carry%20nation&f=false