Cornelia Coventry Burling's Civil War

 

Chintz quilt associated with Cornelia Ann Burling (1794-1882)

Collection of the St. Louis Art Museum.

https://www.slam.org/collection/objects/69107/

The center is a chintz fruit basket cut out from a repeat print and

appliqued to a white background. It looks like the original background was white,

which would have made trimming the basket easier than using the colored backgrounds below.

Cooper-Hewitt Collection

Scrap with a tan blotch ground.

And a pieced repeat on a blue ground. The print

alternated two baskets; one with a scalloped top as in the quilt,

the other with a flat wicker top.

From the museum's records:

"Family documentation records the maker as Cornelia Ann Coventry Burling, a young resident of New York City. Burling’s granddaughter Anna W. Pond McGrew [McGraw?] recalled in a note contained in the family’s papers that she received the quilt as a wedding gift in 1880 and that her grandmother commenced this quilt in 1816, and I quote, 'and it was a year in the quilting frame,' unquote. According to genealogical records, this would have been just before Cornelia’s marriage to Lancaster S. Burling and the birth of their first child in 1818."

And there were at least two Cornelia Burlings

The elder Cornelia Ann Coventry married Lancaster S. Burling, a New York banker from a ship-building family in 1817.  His family owned a good deal of city real estate including the Burling Slip, a docking port and business area indicated by the red star below.

The Burlings were important Methodists in their time, affiliated with the city's first Methodist church now called the John Street Church. Cornelia was said to be the first female superintendent of the first Methodist Sunday School in New York (Always wary of "firsts!") They were both active in the church's missionary society, with Cornelia serving as treasurer in the women's branch there for many years. They sent missionaries to foreign countries acting as "The Heathen Woman's Friend" as one of their affiliated publications was named.

They also maintained an early type of settlement house in the New York slum called Five Points. Their Five Points Mission at the Old Brewery was founded about 1850, providing shelter, food, schooling, counseling ----and they promised---no Methodist doctrine to the largely Catholic immigrant clientele.

Christmas at the Five Points Mission

Husband Lancaster in 1845. He died in 1853.

About 1857 Cornelia was living on W 81st Street in New York City

according to the city directory...

On the upper west side as in this 1890s neighborhood on 81st.

June 1882 obituary. A "relict" is a widow.

The other Cornelia Burling (1820- x) was their daughter---one of six children--- who married Daniel Farnum Pond on Valentine's Day in 1849 in a ceremony officiated over by Bishop Edmond Storer Janes. 

Pond owned a clothing factory Blake & Pond in New York City.

Their daughter Annie probably did receive that quilt as a wedding present when she married towards the end of the century but the family story of its making in 1815 that was passed on with it may not have been accurate. 

Monochrome print / Winterthur Collection

When and where was that fruit basket fabric printed? Where---probably England, supposedly exported to the U.S. when the first Cornelia was preparing her wedding trousseau? But an unlikely time frame. We were not importing much fabric from England in the early teens as we were at war with them until the end of 1814 and trade suffered for years.

See many more examples of the popular basket fabric in seven colorways at this post:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2020/11/catherine-tompkinss-basket-quilt-chintz.html

Catherine Tompkins of Virginia used the flat-topped basket in similar fashion in 

her quilt, pictured in the book Quilts of Virginia.

 The quilt is initialed C.T. for Catherine? who died in 1820 ---again another attribution for the fabric from the teens.

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/143689360/cornelia_ann_burling

Kentucky Classic #8: Kentucky Paw Paw for Louise West Jackman

 

Kentucky Classic #8: Kentucky Paw-Paw by Elsie Ridgley

Kentucky Paw-Paw remembers Kentucky native Louisa West Jackman of Garrard County.

Denver Art Museum

The fruit or buds in this Rose Tree are classic American applique given a variety of names such as pomegranate and love-apple (tomato.) As Louisa was a native Kentuckian we'll call it a Paw-Paw for a Kentucky fruit tree that produces the largest native American fruit (Asimina triloba.)

The WPA writer recording Garrard County lore in the late 1930s noted the paw-paw

was called a Kentucky Banana.

Louisa West Jackman (1831-1908) in her later years.

Louisa was 30 when the Civil War began, living in Garrard County, married to

physician Houston Jackman. In 1863 she had three children 7, 6 and 5.

She had an adventure that year when friend Margaret Vaughn requested her help. Margaret had heard Confederate raiders bragging about fooling Union soldiers into believing Southern forces were larger than they were. These young housewives decided to ride 20 miles to the Union headquarters across the Kentucky River to inform the Yankees of their findings.

I know this is hard to believe but the account is from an 1894 book by Union veteran Eastham Tarrant who said he heard the whole story from Louisa herself. Louisa is also described as a Civil War nurse, a commonly used description in the post war years. With 3 young children it's hard to believe she had time to work as a nurse, but she may have helped Dr. Jackman in his clinic.

Tarrant wrote a chapter on the wild ride.

"During the war she and her husband were ardent unionists and she served in the greater part of the war as a hospital nurse. It was largely through information given by her to the Union army that the Confederates were defeated at the engagement at Dunton Hill."     From her 1908 obituary

We do not know if Louisa made quilts---but her Uncle Lysander West's wife did. Louisa was niece to Lucy Kemper West whose Garrard County quilt is in the collection of the DAR Museum. We'll look at Lucy West next month.

The Block

Pattern #6 is based on a quilt in the collection of Kent State University's Museum.

The Rose Tree (pattern #5  here) is prominent in applique

and stuffed quilting.

Initials and a date in the border vase:

"L T? D June 23rd 1859"

Although attributed to Cadiz in eastern Ohio with an Ohio look to it, the quilt has a few Kentucky characteristics, particularly the speckled fruit, next month's block. The donor thought the family might be Dennen.

No medallion set this month.

Side-by-side set for 14"/15" finished blocks.

Becky Brown has her medallion top done. A few fruit here.

Next month more medallion.

The eight-lobed, layered rose is quite common in American applique. Here's a version in a quilt Barb Eikmeier found in Missouri that does include some more distinctive regional patterns but the floral and the bud/fruit here are really no clues at all to Kentucky.

Sarah Atwater's Civil War: The Wide Awakes

 

Banner made for a Lincoln political club in 1860

by the Ladies of Clarence, New York

In the fall of 1860 as the four-way Presidential election approached, a surge of support for Abraham Lincoln appeared in odd fashion. Women like Sarah Kirtland Atwater, a 16- year-old from Wallingford, Connecticut participated by designing and stitching marching banners for the boys in the Wide Awake
army. Sarah, daughter of a local politician who died when she was about 5 was probably chosen to honor her father.

She may have had several male friends in the local group, which was made up of young men. The grassroots organization included unusual and compelling imagery, most noticeably the eye quite "Wide Awake."

Hake Auctions

Wide-Awakes wore uniforms of shiny black capes and carried lanterns often attached to poles. A paramilitary organization, their purpose was promoting Lincoln's candidacy, establishing order while "Plug-Uglies" and other less peaceful gangs caused chaos at election rallies. And it gave the young men an identity, a fresh identity defined by their clothing.

Online auction photo of a man with a Lincoln/Hamlin badge

and the distinctive shiny black cape that Wide-Awakes wore.

In contrast to destructive gangs disrupting political events the Wide Awakes marched in orderly, well-drilled formation, offering protection for campaigners like Lincoln, William Seward and Cassius Clay.

Hartford parade in the home of the Wide Awakes.

Fireworks and lady spectators waving handkerchiefs.

Jon Grinspan, Curator of Political History at the Smithsonian Institution

has recently published Wide Awake: The Forgotten Force

 That Elected Lincoln and Spurred the Civil War...

Edgar Smith Yergason (1840-1920)

Company B 22nd Connecticut Volunteers

Telling us about this 19-year-old (in soldier's uniform above he's about 21), a clerk in Talcott & Post's dry goods store in Hartford, Connecticut. In winter, 1860, although too young to vote for Lincoln, he had an idea for a political club. Being a lifelong designer he considered the visuals, realizing that a memorable outfit defined a man. He created a uniform, practical but odd, out of the shiny black cotton cambric in Talcott's stock. (Cambric is often used on the underside of chairs to keep the dust out.)

Talcott & Post specialized in interior fabrics.

Oil Cloth was one of their featured items.

Grinspan dates Edgar's idea for a Lincoln club to February, 1860.

Connecticut Wide Awakes, Connecticut Magazine, 1895.

James Chalker in the center with the taller cap was a tailor who sold uniforms.

By November 4th's election day tens of thousands of "Wide-Awakes" across the Northern states had fashioned capes out of shiny black cloth, undoubtedly with the support of female seamstresses, professional and amateur.

August, 1860

Collection of the Library of Congress

George Beza Woodward (1837-1927) Derry, New Hampshire

The lanterns dripped fuel, a practical

reason for a protective cape.

Keene, New Hampshire

While uniforms had much in common the banners seem quite varied, design up to the

local club---and the women who stitched them.  

For all the banners carried in parades very few survive. The above

article from Bangor, Maine lists a few.

A pageant from the ladies of Akron, Ohio

Belfast, Maine

The Wide-Awake idea spread from Connecticut and New England into Lincoln's Illinois and north to Wisconsin and Minnesota where orderly and enthusiastic drills were the major activities.

Three days before the election in Cleveland.

Election Eve, Worcester, Massachusetts

It would seem the role of women in the organization is the time-honored place of "Ladies ' Auxiliary."

Charlotte, Michigan

But newspaper articles tell a bit about women's Wide-Awake groups who paraded on horseback. Just a bit.

Agency, Iowa

Women crossing boundaries were considered fair game for hooligans who had their own uniformed clubs.

Urbana, Illinois, October 1, 1860

Lincoln's November victory was celebrated by the students' Wide-Awake club at the women's academy Mount Holyoke.

St. Louis Globe, November 20, 1860

250 Wide-Awake Lincoln fans versus 30 Douglas grievers

 

Sarah's presentation and speech right before the war began may have been the high point of her

war experience, mostly spent in her teenage years in Wallingford in New Haven County about 30 miles south of Hartford.

She had no brothers or father in the fight as her father died soon after the 1850 census recorded him, his wife, three young daughters and a pair of servants.

Sarah married Frederick Royal Manning (1827-1898) becoming his second wife in 1868. She moved to Brooklyn, New York where he ran a dry goods store and they raised his children and their daughter and son.

A relative founded the Choate school on Atwater property in Wallingford. 

1921 Obituary Meriden Journal

After Frederick's death Sarah returned to Connecticut where she lived into the 1920s.

Edgar Yergason also moved to New York after many years at Talcott & Post where he became a partner with a reputation for his interior designs. He opened his own firm on Fifth Avenue, winning commissions from the Harrison & McKinley administrations to decorate White House rooms.

He's remembered for his interior design but Grinspan explores

his clever move to outfit some young men for political action.

Unknown Wide Awake

Collection Pamplin Historical Park

Men looking for a place in society do like to fraternize.

Smithsonian Institution Collection

In his introduction Grinspan writing in recent months compares the defining mood of 1860 to the current divisions some of the nostalgic see as the end of democracy, imagining a past of united Americans. See a preview here:

https://books.google.com/books?id=nuPYEAAAQBAJ&printsec=frontcover&dq=Wide+Awake:+The+Forgotten+Force&hl=en&newbks=1&newbks_redir=0&sa=X&ved=2ahUKEwjRq8LB-fmHAxUWrYkEHRnGDQ4Q6AF6BAgIEAI#v=onepage&q=Wide%20Awake%3A%20The%20Forgotten%20Force&f=false