Silk Quilts in Kentucky: Source of the Silk

 

Kentucky quilt

Silk in Kentucky seems to have been rather abundant as one characteristic of the state's quilt history is many silk patchwork extravaganzas from about 1840 on. Despite the mountainous area's inaccessibility in the age of railroads the quilts give us much evidence of the luxury fabric's availability, at least in the major cities of Lexington and Louisville.

Kentucky quilt in satins, velvets and brocades from the Filson Society's collection.

Kentucky Historical Society

Silk Star of Bethlehem attributed to Ann Eliza Belrichard 

Bryan (1835-1867) of Louisville

A subset of Kentucky's quilt heritage is a group of quilts from rural Logan County, attributed to the plantation called The Knob near Russellville.

The silk quilts are unusual in their shared star designs and stuffed-work

quilting. The three are attributed to the enslaved seamstresses at the Morton family's

plantation the Knob.

The Knob about 1860

Not exactly the nostalgic image of the old Kentucky home but

the buildings to the right are the homes of the slaves,

which included Ellen and Margaret to whom the quilts are attributed

by the Morton owners who donated them.

Russellville would seem an unlikely spot to find such sophisticated silk fabrics before the Civil War and the late-19th-century abundance of silk factory cutaways that were made into crazy quilts. Quilts grow out of the available fabric. How was this luxury fabric, primarily produced in China, available to the Morton women?

A Shaker sister named Indiana Pilkington wearing the

traditional sisters' accessory of a silk scarf. The photos

are from the Shaker Museum at South Union, KY.

 I was re-reading Claire Somersille Nolan's 2005 paper "The Star of Bethlehem Variation Quilt" in Uncoverings 26 and realized she had a ready answer. Near Russellville a Shaker community thrived for many years. Claire tells us:

Americans interested in communal living and silk culture tried silk production, but maintaining the silk worms and harvesting their filament was just not suited to the American temperament and experiments soon failed. The Chinese were masters of sericulture and continue to be today. The Shakers' interest in silk production and the sale of their silk scarves probably affected Kentucky quilts style down by the Tennessee border.

Read Claire's paper here:

https://digitalcommons.unl.edu/do/search/?q=author%3A%22Claire%20Somersille%20Nolan%22&start=0&context=52045&facet=

She found out quite a bit about Ellen Morton Littlejohn and Margaret Morton Bibb. The Morton slaveholders were skillful at keeping records of their own lives and often mentioned the Black people who lived with them. Both women were daughters of Eve (born about 1805) who also had three boys Dick, Joe and John (or was it Ned.) The Shaker Museum has Morton family files where Claire found this photograph.

Plantation owner Marmaduke Morton's son David was born in 1833 and his mother died soon after his birth. He recalled being raised by his stepmother (his mother's sister) and "Aunt Eve, who nursed me as a baby and both caressed and scolded me as a little child." 

Claire did her research 20 years ago. I bet we can find out quite a bit more about

Eve and her family today and a couple of other quilts attributed to the Mortons.

UPDATE:  

A 1993 paper on Shaker silk production, which seems to have begun in the 1830s.

Parker, Donna C. and Jeffrey, Jonathan J. Sericulture, Silk and South Union Shakers. The Shaker Messenger, Volume XV, Number 1, 1993.

"Extant Shaker kerchiefs in the collections of Shakertown at South Union and The Kentucky Museum at Western Kentucky University reveal the color combinations the Shakers produced.  Rose, lavender, purple, and white examples make up the bulk of these collections, but items of a green, a mustard, and a brown plaid also exist.  In 1869, Sarah Bates of Mount Lebanon, New York, wrote to Eldress Nancy that she was "fitted out for nice silk Handkerchiefs, of many qualities and many colors.  One White, three mixed colors Red blue &c and mostly by your hard labors, at Pleasant Hill and South Union."  Many times Shaker Sisters wove handkerchiefs so they had a "changeable," or iridescent quality.  They achieved the illusion by using one color for the warp thread and another color for the filling."  

https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/dlsc_fac_pub/21

Uh-Oh!

 

Quilt from the mid-20th-century

Pattern published long before that.

Hexagon Diamond Pattern

A reader of the Prairie Farmer magazine told Mrs. Munson

 that she'd been piecing this design for a long time, first over paper

when a girl and now on her sewing machine, 

which was "a ready helper in making patchwork."

I see this is a reference not in my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns

(BlockBase+)

But that's not the reason for the "Uh-Oh."

It is where I found the pattern in an 1886 periodical.

The University of Illinois has a digitized collection of "Farm, Field & Fireside" publications.

You could spend hours searching for words like quilt, pattern or patchwork.

There is the problem. Browsing.

No pies getting made around here.

Here's a search for quilt in Prairie Farmer. See time line on the left.

Hmmm.

Here's the link:

https://idnc.library.illinois.edu/?a=p&cltn=FFF&p=collections

Valentines

 

I've been drawing patterns with hearts.

Folded paper designs to stitch in red for Valentine's Day.

The puns on these mid-20th-c valentine cards

made the most of sewing terms.

Hearts & Doves, popular in Ulster, Ireland

Fold fabric in fourths. Cut out this design.

Sew clever.

Early Silk Quilt

 

Center panel in a silk quilt signed Catherine Bradford

Below her name: an eagle?

The panel may have been finished years before the patchwork field of triangles

were added.

Catherine Penniman Bradford's quilt was pictured in the Wisconsin project's book Wisconsin Quilts: History In The Stitches by Ellen Kort.

Catherine Penniman Bradford (1778-1827) Massachusetts

As Catherine died in 1827 we conclude the bedcover was completed in the first quarter of the 19th century. It may have been commenced when she was young at the end of the 18th. Genealogy is confusing because parents named daughters Catherine in her family for many generations and the quilt is said to have been passed on to a succession of Catherines.

Is that William Bradford heading the party in this imaginary 

depiction of the landing in 1620?

One reason this rare piece has survived is that Catherine's husband Charles (1767-1851) was descended from the William Bradford (1590-1657) family of Mayflower fame. It was important because it was associated with New England's "first families."

Charles was born almost 150 years after the famous ship landed in Massachusetts but six or more generations is nothing in ancestor-worshipping culture of New England.

Mayflower descendants

See the quilt at the Quilt Index here:

https://quiltindex.org//view/?type=fullrec&kid=15-11-3466

Mayflower passengers on landing

And the actual history is not so sunny as

stories that are widely preserved.

Catherine Penniman Bradford's husband was a descendant of William's second wife. Bradford's first wife Dorothy May Bradford (1597-1620) drowned soon after the Mayflower landed when she fell or jumped from the ship. I'm voting for jumped. It was all too much. The 23-year-old woman had left her child in England. William was traveling around leaving her on that cold ship in a Massachusetts December. 

Reels, Hickory Leaves and a Soul Knot

 

A popular pattern both pieced and appliqued

As a pieced design the pattern's been published often

with a variety of names as shown in my Encyclopedia of

Pieced Patterns & BlockBase. 

Ruth Finley called it "The Reel"

It also appears in my applique Encyclopedia.

Lately I've been looking at the appliqued versions

where quiltmakers added to the basic design with variety in the additional motifs.

The pattern is one of the earlier American block designs appearing about 1830. In her catalog of the Briscoe Center's quilt collection Katherine Jean Adams discussed a quilt from Joyce Gross's collection, noting that their example seems to have originated in New Jersey.

The Eachus/Hoopes quilt is similar to this common design with

three small leaves added to the North/South axis.

Katherine Jean Adams

I'd guess the design originated in Pennsylvania among German immigrants

and their descendants. These three early examples seem to have come from an

extended Lutheran family in Bucks County/

I am drawing reel structures for my Pop In Applique series, volume 3.

Am I going to sew a Reel/Hickory Leaf?  Did it once in the 1990s.

Photoshopping easier.

The variations are many....

And reels seem to have evolved into other designs.

Read more about the early Pennsylvania versions in a long-ago blog post:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2016/10/triplets-schleifer-kichlein-fraktur.html

Read Del-Louise Moyer's lengthy post on those quilts:
"Fraktur Quilts from the Schleifer-Kichlein Family"
https://alyssumarts.com/2016/09/04/fraktur-quilts-from-the-schleifer-kichlein-family/