Annual Delaware Antiques Show 2019

A letter fromMargaret Brachen—a women who had pieced a quilt and sent it to an anti-slavery bazaar—was published in 1857 in the abolitionist newspaper The Liberator: Whilst sitting at my work, I thought there must be as many stitches in my quilt as you have slaves in America . . . there are about twenty times as many slaves in America as there are stitches in my quilt; and when I thought of the helpless misery endured by every individual slave . . . I cannot express the appalling sensation which comes over me. Brachen then apologizes for her letter’s length with a note: “When an old woman has patched a quilt, she longs to tell some of the thoughts which occupied her mind.” The quilt Mrs. Brachen pieced was infused with her thoughts concerning the immorality of slavery. That same principle could also apply to album quilts that symbolize a female relationship or an important occasion. Were the quilt squares sewn with thoughts of that specific maker’s relationship with the recipient? Other than geographic proximity, the unifying link between the female quilters of the Harrison album quilt is not known, nor is the reason behind the quilt’s creation. The majority of the women who signed their names to their quilt squares escape archival records, a common historical struggle when researching the lives of early American women. We do know that the four family groups represented in this quilt all lived in Westchester County, New York, a county experiencing rapid industrial growth and political polarization on the eve of the Civil War. As political turmoil, slavery, and regionalism threatened war, female companionship and social groups provided stability and fellowship. Human relationships, however, are entangled, unequal, and constantly evolving. The Harrison album quilt encompasses relationships between mothers and daughters as well as extended family and neighbors. It even connects the large number of enslaved Africans in mid-nineteenth-century America with female quilters who fought for abolition even as they used fabric made from cotton picked with that labor. Unfortunately, the meanings behind these personal and political relationships are lost to us today. The makers of the Harrison album quilt are the only ones privy to their thoughts, and perhaps that is the point. Emily Whitted is a second-year Lois F. McNeil Fellow in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture. — 110 —