Quilt top

[WV Sawmiller]

   Saturday we went to Greenville SC for a memorial service for a dear old friend of ours who died last month. Her husband was assigned as my sponsor on my first job with the company which was in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia back in 1992 or so. He had died several years ago while I was on another overseas assignment and my wife attended his service but I could not be there. I saw her son and grandkids and DIL and such and a couple of old buddies from that project including my first boss and our HR guy. 

    Yesterday after we were home I remembered and called the son in Spartanburg SC and advised him to be on the look out for an old quilt top his mom had. His mom had asked my wife a couple years ago to finish quilting it but my wife declined because of the age and history of the top. Also it was pretty fragile and needed a restoration expert to do the work. My wife quilts on a sewing machine and this quilt needed to be hand stitched, I told the son the story behind the quilt top and he said he had never heard about it.

    The history was that during the civil War/War for Southern Independence/War of Northern Aggression (Pick your favorite) Sherman's troops passed through the area of Virginia where their ancestors lived - near Surry Va. (It appears after Sherman took Atlanta - I think he started the current traffic issues there but that is another story - he headed for Richmond Va. and evidently his outlying forces passed through the more coastal regions of Va.) The Union troops sent out foragers, generally part of the Quartermasters duties IIRC, to search for food and materials the Union troops needed. They also would "confiscate" any valuables they found to deny them to the Confederate troops. Anyway, they raided the home of this young man's ancestors and among the other items they took they confiscated/stole all of the quilts and blankets in the home for use by the Union troops. This particular quilt top had been pieced (small squares that were sewn together by hand into a large single sheet) together by the house slave and was on the rack to be quilted During quilting a bottom would have been added and raw cotton or wool or such would have been added between the quilt top and the bottom and sewn in small patches to keep the fill from shifting resulting in a finished quilt. Since the top was not a finished quilt it had no value to the foragers so they left it on the rack. For whatever reasons over the 150 or so years since the top was never made into a finished quilt. It was passed to Ann, my friend, as the oldest daughter of the family or because she sewed and her grandmother or great aunt who had the quilt might have thought she would finish it.

   Anyway, the son was happy to learn of the history and will be looking for it as they sort through his mom's belongings. Hopefully it will be donated to a museum where the craftsmanship can be appreciated and the history can be preserved. One such place might be the civil war museum in Richmond if it has not been shut down and demolished due to on-going political correctness concerns. It might be donated to an African American historical society for the same reason since the house slaves did the work. Either would be appropriate IMHO as long as it is treated with the dignity and respect it deserves.

[doc henderson]

good on you.  please send pics if it turns up and is able to get its place in history.

[Don P]

That is indeed a good deed, but someone needs to open a history book. Sherman turned to Raleigh and General Johnston after meeting up with fresh troops at the railhead in Goldsboro,NC following Bentonville. During those few days he dashed north and had a parlay with lincoln and Grant, their only face to face during the war. He returned, spared Raleigh, then he and Johnston met at Bennet Place near Durham NC where he accepted Johnston's surrender following Lee's. His bummers and camp followers usually cut a swath about 40 miles wide, if there was a usually and there were lots of irregulars.
There was a flag at the museum, or 2 stars and a piece of bar anyway. I used to be able to find it there online, not anymore.

[rusticretreater]

One such place might be the civil war museum in Richmond if it has not been shut down and demolished due to on-going political correctness concerns.

The Museum of the Confederacy merged with the American Civil War Museum.  The American Civil War Museum is based at the site of the Tredegar Iron Works on the south side of Richmond but also operates two other sites, the Appomattox museum and the White House of the Confederacy. Tredegar was the largest iron works in the south and a primary reason Richmond became Capitol of the South.  The White House of the Confederacy(which housed the Museum of the Confederacy) is still a museum and has many Confederate artifacts still on display and is open to the public.