Rev. Betsy Youdris: Hidden in Plain Sight: The Story of Quilts & the Underground Railroad

uh we are doing a program today it's called the hidden meaning in quilts and we have betsy yudras with us she is a method a retired vastness preacher and she also has an avid quilter and she's done quite a bit of research on this that she's done this pros program in school and so this would be a great one for field trips as well so without further ado we're going to welcome that's the uterus but she's not pepsi right now [Music] freedom over me and before i'd be a slave i'd be buried in my grave and go home [Music] me and before i'd be slave i'd be buried in my faith and go home to my lord and be free there'll be singing there'll be dancing there'll be joy over me and before i'd be asleep i'd be buried in my grave and go home to my lord and be free oh hello i'm s well i'm so glad to see all of you i hope that some of you would come i'm just back from my quilting bee in town and i had my quilt all set up but i didn't know whether anybody would really come this is the henneman farm as you may have seen as you came down the drive and i'm caroline henneman and my husband charles and i own this farm and because it's 1870 i can tell you a secret that we've kept for a very very long time because our farm was a stop on the underground railroad and i was hoping you could come and that i could show you the quilt that my friends and i made and explain some of the quilt blocks and and the messages that that they sent so let me start in the days when we began oh such a long time ago now i had an entire quilt that was made out of this block now anyone who's quilted for a long long time knows this is the jacobs ladder block but once we started our work it came to be known as the underground railroad block and if you'll notice how the light and the dark plays in here and i'll keep moving so you can see both sides but you could make this dark point in a direction and you could change that direction by hanging the quilt a different way and we'd throw it over our front porch railing and anybody coming by would know that that meant that this was a safe house and only those of us in the system knew that that's what that meant but if we put it out really on the gate post and turn it around we also could make it point to the next stop we used all our quilt blocks in many many different ways and because our passengers we were stationed on the underground railroad perhaps i should tell you how i got that name we've gone by many names one of them was gospel train and you know trains were such a new thing before the war started that train language was very popular among all people in the united states and a slave catcher was running after an escaped slave and after the compromise of 1850 the law said that it wasn't enough to get a slave across the ohio river into the north we now had to get them all the way to canada because it became law that if you caught a slave even north of the southern states that slave had to be returned to its owner and there were slave catchers who ran after escaped slaves and one such person was doing that and was really close closing in on his prey and all of a sudden the man just disappeared and when he went back home he said well i don't know i don't know i was right behind him i thought i had him and he just disappeared he was like the ground opened up and an underground railroad swept him away well the name stuck and of course we loved it and we began to use the language so we were a station and our guests were passengers and pretty soon we would it was helpful to know how many men how many women the men were hardware how much hardware are you carrying four boxes four crates how much dry goods those were the women and so we used the language of the railroad to tell a lot we also used what we call the spirituals the songs of of the african people and swing low sweet chariot was was a was a favorite we used those they were we understood because they taught us and the song that i sang when i was coming in i learned from several of my passengers of freedom and i've been singing it to myself ever since it means a lot to me that my family was able to be part of that we're just about an hour in bad weather two-hour carriage ride north of reverend rankin who was above the ohio river and that was a first stop we weren't allowed to know i don't know where they went from us we didn't share that information so if any of us got caught we didn't have that information to give they were very they were deliberately very very secretive once the war was over and slavery was against the law and the slaves were free we began to meet each other and talk now the second one the second quote that would have gone outside or it also had been shown in slave quarters because the slaves knew this code also this particular code came to us from south carolina from an area around charleston and people all over i'm sure had their own quote this is a specific code and i'm sharing it with you but i'm sure other people had codes too we were all using the quilts this is a monkey wrench frederick douglass had a monkey ranch quilt in his home in washington dc because frederick douglass as a slave had been a monkey wrench the blacksmith was also called the monkey wrench and the blacksmith was often loaned out to other plantations so he was he had an advantage in that he knew what way beyond plantation grounds he knew the land a little bit better you know once you get out of the plantation there's a river uh be careful of the mountain he could warn other slaves about that and he could get information but the monkey wrench was a tool and this really this code when the slaves found it when it was set out within the slave community and among the slave cabins this this quilt said begin to pack your tools if you're going to run you're going to need tools slaves weren't allowed to have things like knives but if you could find one that would be helpful could you get your hands on a compass food what kind of food and they had to pack light what kind of food could you pack but they also had to pack mental tools if you were going to undertake an escape you had to have a strong mind you had to have practice being able to tell whether someone who pretended to help you was going to help you or betray you and slaves you can imagine learn that skill early on who can i trust and who can't i trust so tools the monkey wrench quilt and if you can imagine every single one of these blocks we had an entire quilt of these blocks this is the monkey wrench pack your tools the next quilt that went out was the wagon wheel we all had very special wagons we had a wagon that had a false bottom in it and between the bottom bottom and the next bottom a human being could lie down flat and our wagon was big enough that we could get three or four people or two adults and several children lying flat on our false bottom and then we'd fill it with hay and there were holes so that these poor people could breathe they can't have been comfortable bumping you know the hour or two from our farm to the next farm but it was it was better than than being on your own two feet and sometimes we were able very nicely there's a wonderful story that has come to us of a minister in nebraska who lived just outside of town and he was known frequently to ride into town on his wagon and there were always two women with him one on either side of him and they i'm going to show you they had their bonnets on and he would ride into town with the babies in their buns and ladies of course very polite in those days and you didn't show your face that much and if you turned your head like this no one noticed he would ride back out of town later in the afternoon with the same two ladies on either side of him and because of the brim of the hat no one realized that the two ladies in the afternoon had slightly darker complexions than the ladies who'd ridden in with him in the morning and it became a very very clever way to move at least women dry goods in in and out of town to to the to the next place you know this is a probably a good place to say there a lot of thought went into those of us who were on our side of the underground railroad we were known as abolitionists and we felt very very strongly that holding another human being captive was wrong and that god would not have approved of that and we fought to change that and and to make that wrong we knew how intelligent our passengers were we also knew that the people that owned these people fully believed that they couldn't think as well as we could we depended on that the fugitive slaves and we depended on the plantation owners figuring that these people weren't smart enough to plan something as skilled as it would take to get off a plantation and make your way through the wilderness and across the ohio river and into the north and let someone in the north help get them to cleveland or detroit and into canada and we use that and also many people have thought that that the slaves didn't do anything about their freedom until the abolitionists got started to help them get free that also is just not true as we who did this listened to our our guests our passengers who came through that we helped from the time the first ship arrived with african people to work in in this country as as first indentured servants and then as slaves there was never a moment that they weren't trying to get free once we got started in the 1820s really going by the 1830s we helped organize it a little bit better on our side of the river and of course very quickly realized we had to we had to get to cleveland or detroit so let's keep going cleveland and detroit remember that the wagon wheel get on the wagon wheel and this one is the carpenter's will and as i'll read it to you with the end the slave people had learned a lot about jesus may not have known about jesus before the first people got here from africa but they learned and they very quickly identified with those stories the other thing was they realized that when they started singing songs about jesus their owners were just thrilled that their efforts to christianize the slaves was being so successful but those wonderful songs about jesus and what jesus was fighting oh freedom fighting you to do gave them a whole language to talk to each other that their owners had no idea what they were saying so jesus the carpenter and this is the bear's paw i'll get to this side of the bear's claw uh this is a story that comes out of south carolina and clearly to get to keep cleveland you've got to get up and over the appalachian mountains the appalachian mountains are full of air and the advice of the bears quilt was to follow the bears trail a bear's trail will lead you to water and food bears like to eat eat berries all of which would be all right for humans to eat also there's also a bears trail in the appalachians that many in in south carolina knew about so there's some specific reference to that but really any any bears trail and they re they recommended that most of the escapes happen in the springtime the bear were waking up they were looking for food there was a lot of rain it was easy to find bear prints in in in what soil so a bear's paw was a good thing to try to follow if you had to go up and over the mountains the next one to appear would have been the basket and and like the monkey wrench the basket told you it's time to start packing what you're going to take similar messages it was difficult to pack food but as much food as you could get your hands on they knew if they could pack a day or two of food if they could get to the river that there would be people like us who would be giving them food but they had they had to get to to the river so the basket telling you to pack all of this leading you to the crossroads you're down out of the mountains and now you're you're you're going to make your way to the crossroads every one of us in the business knew there were two main crossroads talked about here cleveland and the signal for cleveland was hope move on toward hope that meant go to cleveland detroit was midnight walk walk and keep walking until midnight because cleveland or detroit was a place where you could get on a ship and sail into canada from from either place so they were major destinations to get out of this country into a place where they would be safe so the crossroads and then they told you to to build a log cabin and that may very well have been a signal wherever you are stop find a safe house once you get to the crossroads stop this was another quilt that could have been put out in the front of a farm or a house and you know most log cabin quilts had red centers which signified the fireplace the heart of the home you notice that this has a black center that was it's such a tiny little square you'd have to know what you were looking for that again meant this is a safe house and again because of the dark and the light you could you could have a signal in that area look for the log cabin quilt with the dark center and then follow the direction that the light points you to we could we could hang it any way we wanted to you had to know what the signal was going to be you know to really use it shoe fly that's this next one shoe fly was a person and shoe fry was probably the person in cleveland or detroit or whatever city where you wound up being shoe fly was a person who would find you and tell you what to do next now you can imagine you know that slaves didn't didn't wear nice clothing and now they've been on a trail for days or weeks and the clothing they had is now really really ragged and slave clothing identify just like just like christian clothing with the stripes slave clothing told everyone i'm an escaped slave so shoe fly i'm going to get over here again shoe fly the next one is the bow tie shoe fly told you to put on satin and bow ties translation find someone to help you change your clothes put on better clothes so that you look like you are a free person of color and you have a right to be walking around in this town and walk like you have a right to be walking around in this town while you make your your connection uh with with the ship's captain or where but you'll have help getting to where you need to be and then we come to the two squares of about the birds and this won't surprise you either this is flying geese and the geese fly north in the summer and they fly south they fly south in the spring don't they and they fly north and no i'm opposite they fly north in the spring and they fly south in the summer and here again if you see and the birds are noisy you know geese make a lot of noise when they're in the air so if you're in a field and you hear a bunch of geese walking away over your head you can pretty much go and you know they're going to land where there's water and where there's food and and you might be able to get some of that grain and make it into something you could eat and then birds in the air with the same thing um the geese or the birds in the air any one of them could give you some direction and and we're back to so many of the escapes happened in in the spring and uh swing low sweet chariot coming forty carry me home and if you know the verses next time you're somewhere and you're actually singing that song my lord calls me he calls me by the thunder when do we have the most thunderstorms what can you hear when the world is thundering the thunder will will help you and then the lightning and the lightning will flash light and help you figure out maybe green leaves are bending green green leaves in spring so go in the spring when the green leaves are popping up all kinds of signals in the verses of that song and swing low sweet chariot i ain't got long to stay here it was a wonderful message they really meant it too so the birds in the air and we're in cleveland or detroit this one on the bottom i'm gonna see if i can pick this up for you and back can you see this wiggly squiggly green one this is called the drunkard's path because it it really twists and turns and the message of the drunkard's path was don't go in a straight line in fact double back on yourself once in a while grab a box because if the dogs are following you and all of a sudden your trail turns around the smell turns around and comes back you're now intermingling your smell over your smell and you're going in the wrong direction and you really get them confused so they did they they were guided to go in a very wiggly uh often retreating on top of itself before you turned around and went the other way so the drunkard's path was a good piece of advice always uh kind of new i think i'm stepping on my petticoat kind of new after we got going with this the sailboat that wasn't as popular a quilt block early on but the sailboat again get to cleveland or detroit where you're going to try to hook up with a boat and the boat's going to take you across to canada early on both harriet tubman and frederick douglass got into canada and just over the border and uh east of windsor which it was accessible through detroit is straight north of where you would have gone in from cleveland they set up a community that became a highly successful community of escaped slaves they founded a government they established schools it became quite a goal for slaves to to get there because they achieved some freedom you know great britain about slavery william wilberforce and the parliament and they abolished slavery i want to say in 1848 and and took themselves out of the slave trade and of course we kept going until the end of the civil war and the final one in in this code is the star again i'll pick this up and this we filters call this a bethlehem star but for the slaves trying to make their way north it became known as the north star and obviously if you're following the land and especially if you're on your own without conductors the north star is a wonderful guy that you're you're going in in the right direction so i'm going to come back over here and and the very last block on my quilt gives the poem as we were given it by our friend in in south carolina and this is so see if you can follow along and i'm in front of a couple of them i'm sorry um the monkey wrench turns the wagon wheel toward canada with so the wagon wheel with help from jesus the carpenter and this is the one up here follow the bears trail through the woods fill your baskets with enough food and supplies to get you to the crossroads once you get to the crossroads dig a log cabin in the ground shoe fly told us to dress up in cotton and satin bow ties follow the flying geese and the birds in the air stay on the drunkard's path take the sailboat across the great lakes to the north star above canada and for many that that was the goal harriet tubman escaped from her the the plantation where she'd been a slave she started working in the fields when she was sold into that's that particular plantation where she worked when she was six years old and she escaped from it and went to canada and she made her way back into the south 19 times and it's estimated that she brought some 300 slaves out of the south and she never lost a passenger not a single one the stories we've heard about her is that when she got the group together she told them our lives be depend on trusting each other and i'll shoot you before i'll let you betray us anyone if you get cold feet know you're in trouble with me because you're on this trail you know me you've got one stop and that's that's canada and she made it there with everybody harriet would um she used she used the spirituals all the time there was one in particular that she'd walk by slave cabins singing the first time and then you would you would know okay something's up she's about to take us out and then they would sit there can you imagine the tension and they would wait if she came back through she committed through a second time and she starts singing the same spiritual and it was a specific spiritual all over again actually as an old methodist tim and she only changed a few words so the plantation owners would have recognized that as a good methodist him and but she changed the end of it there was a certain ending that meant we're going and another ending that meant no people are watching or not going she'd go out in the fields and work as a field hand what she knew how to do and she realized that the slave catchers were catching up with it that there would she maybe hitting some people uh out by the creek she'd come in and she'd work in the fields to find out where the owners were or the slave catchers were and all of a sudden you hear her start to sing wait in the water wait in the water children she said just shouting and that meant you're by the creek get under the water find a reed get yourself under the water breathe in the reed they're coming you don't want your sense so the dogs can't pick you up get under the water and then when it was okay she'd change your song to something else so she was just an amazing an amazing amazing woman we had some of her people come through our home and we were able to keep them at our homeless guests that was always an honor well i thank you for coming to see my wonderful quilt it really does tell a story for those of us here in southwestern ohio it's very very meaningful because we had many guests who had come this route from south carolina to us and then north through ohio and in into canada thank you for coming to my home today [Applause] and now i can be me now i can be betsy and i'm i would be happy to answer any questions that you might have good job well i've got the four i if you i know you've walked in and walked past it my husband chuck whom i call charles and our last name is not hannah and it's uterus but my husband chuck has was collecting civil war guns and memorabilia when i met him and it's been so we've had a lifelong interest in the civil war together and my son scott um whom some of you know he said he lives here in one and he's a trustee for moani and the two of them have brought some of the things that they have if you haven't already looked i invite you to spend some time with them and i have some books over here that you might find kind of interesting one that's in the back the underground railroad in illinois and i always mention it i grew up in peoria and i didn't have any idea as i was i wasn't that interested in it but peoria had several stops on the underground underground railroad it's fun to look up any town in illinois where you might have been and and see what they show about underground railroad participation um my my program is based on hidden in plain view and it it's the one that tells the quilt code that that i have in this quilt and it's the one that is from south carolina i need to tell you that there is a quilter and i think yeah barbara brackman who doesn't believe this story of the quote code and she's written quite a bit about it because there's not enough provenance to prove it well the african society used everything they had you can well imagine any quilt that they had as it started to wear they cut it apart and all that was left of it was a doily for a tabletop i mean they they just use it and use it i doubt it very much that they might have used as a signal remains as i said there's a there's a quilt in frederick douglass's home there are several prominent um african people african-american people who do have a few things just enough to make the rest of it i find it very plausible but i've been a quilter for a long time and the stories of all the quilt blocks and and women going west and quilting on the wagon trains and quilting messages into what they and women have always done that so i don't find that hard to believe in any way and i invite you to look at that and and then the actual uh quilt book that that helped me do this quilt and while i tell the story of being at the quilting group in town it was the year that i had my first knee replacement um i had women friends at church so i made a i put the quilt together and i made a couple of the blocks but there are about six women from the frankfort united methodist church that really helped me make this quilt so that makes it even more special to me i can really stand up here as a quilter and say that my quilting friends and i put put this sample quilt together because indeed we did um we have i have some fabric i have from we've gone to a number of reenactments the confederate gray and northern blue both shades of it if you come up and look at these little little pieces of wound wool look at the tags they'll tell you the plant that the dyes were made from and you might find that you know interesting to see and then um again in chuck's collection this is an artillery uniform some of you may know this artillery was red the uniforms were the same but you notice this is trimmed in red that means that the person who wore this was in the artillery if it had been where's chuck if it was yellow it was cavalry right and if it was light blue it was infantry and uh and of course uh their cartridge the cartridge box that that hung on it you might want to come up and look at that so i'm glad to have shared with you i hope you've enjoyed thank you very much thank you so much betsy we have a wonderful presentation and i invite everybody to come on up take a look at the things that uh betsy has on the table and if you have some questions that you didn't get to ask when we were talking just come on up and ask them we've got another presentation at 3 30 uh with abraham lincoln visiting us so we have plenty of time to mill around between now and then thank you and there's refreshments over there

Channel: Monee Historical Society

Views: 3,563

Keywords: underground railroad, monee, monee history, quilts, quilting

Id: LQJutxlKFtI

Length: 33min 52sec (2032 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 14 2022