Charleston Loan Exhibition

47 Ruth Middleton (dates unknown) Ashley’s sack Charleston, SC, ca. 1850, sack; 1921, needlework Plain-weave cotton ground; cotton lock stitch fabrication; three strand-cotton embroidery floss, back-stitch embroidery H. 29 ⁄⁄/!^ x W. 15¾ inches Lent by Middleton Place Foundation, Charleston, SC In 1921, Ruth Middleton was inspired to inscribe on a family heirloom, a mid-nineteenth- century dry goods sack, what she knew about its enslaved owners. Using brown-, green-, and rose-colored embroidery thread, she recorded in neat handworked back-stitches the descent of the sack from her great-grandmother to her grandmother, both of whom had been slaves on a South Carolina plantation: My great grandmother Rose / mother of Ashley gave her this sack when / she was sold at age 9 in South Carolina / it held a tattered dress 3 handfuls of / pecans a braid of Roses hair. Told her, / It be filled with my Love always / she never saw her again / Ashley is my grandmother / Ruth Middleton / 1921 Sacks made of plain-weave cotton, like this example, were manufactured for flour, seeds and other food staples beginning in the late 1840s with the invention of the industrial sewing machine. Unlike stitching by hand, the double locking chain stitch produced by the machine made a seam strong enough to hold heavy contents. 1 Constructed in the same way, Ashley’s sack had seen much use by the time Ruth Middleton added her inscription; the numerous worn spots had been reinforced with rectangles of cloth carefully hand-sewn in place. Searches through surviving Middleton family probate records from the late-eighteenth and nineteenth centuries have revealed at least nine enslaved women named Rose; however, the name Ashley has not come to light. MES and KS 1. As early as 1861, Rev. Anthony Toomer Porter’s Industrial School in Charleston employed thirty-two of these machines to assemble Confederate uniforms for South Carolina’s troops. Ron Field and Robin Smith, Uniforms of the Civil War: An Illustrated Guide for Historians, Collectors, and Reenactors (Guilford, CT: Lyons Press, 2001), 161.