Road trip! A local one, anyway…Marcus Retail Division president Stephanie Dell ‘Olio and Pati Violick, Director of Marketing, recently took in the exhibition Homefront & Battlefield – Quilts & Contest in the Civil War. Photography of the quilts was not allowed, but these quilt images and details were graciously shared with us by Diane Fagan Affleck, Consulting Curator of the exhibit.
The exhibit runs through August 24, 2014. Details
Botanical Album Quilt, 1859
Made by Esther Matthews (1776–1866)
for Addison Blair Martz (1834–63)
Virginia
Cotton; pieced, appliquéd, quilted
The rhetoric of secession created conflicts for
Southerners whose loyalties were torn between state
and country. Esther Mathews placed 23 flowers native
to her Virginia home around a “Tree of Liberty” with
30 apples. (There were 30 states between 1848 and
1851.) Did Esther make the quilt to express her loyalties
during the crisis of 1850? Did she give it to her grandson
Addison to remind him of those sentiments?
Addison enlisted in the Confederate army. He died of
wounds received at the battle of Chancellorsville.
Virginia Quilt Museum, Harrisonburg, VA, 2006.001.001
Pictorial Quilt, 1861–65
Attributed to Emily L. Wiley Munroe
Lynnfield, Massachusetts
Wool and cotton; pieced, appliquéd, embroidered Emily Munroe watched four of her six brothers enlist in the Union army: Daniel and Joseph together in the infantry, then Charles and 16-year-old Zachary in a cavalry unit. Many women like Emily who sent loved ones to war suspected that their suffering was one more emotion that knew no sectional boundaries, but was a bond common to North and South. In the end, unlike so many others, Emily could rejoice. All four of her brothers came home.
New England Quilt Museum, Lowell, MA, 2000.2
Photo: Massachusetts Quilt Documentation Project
Here’s Stephanie with Abe Lincoln…”He was a little stiff…”
