By Roseanne McKee
Republished with permission of the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise
A few months ago while at the Nowata County Historical Society Museum I noticed an exhibit about a mystery quilt. Dated Monday, Dec. 18, 1915, the quilt’s mystery lies in the cryptic symbols on each square. As the photo shows some quilt squares contain letters and numbers, while others contain flowers, stars and even a cube. The mystery quilt was the catalyst for this column.
I had the Nowata County Historical Society President
Although I don’t possess the requisite patience, or skill, to construct a quilt, I do appreciate them for the warmth they provide and their artistic beauty.
Recently I had the flu and was grateful for my quilt, heated by my husband in the dryer, to warm me when I had the chills. The quilt’s weight provides its own comfort. I love the rare moments when my teen son joins me on the sofa with quilt covering us or the cat decides to perch precariously on my side to nap while I’m under the quilt.
Quilts have provided much more than comfort in the past, however.
“Quilts served many purposes during the Civil War. From acting as a medium for patriotic statements to serving as a way to keep soldiers warm in the field, these historic textiles had an important place in the conflict between North and South,” according to the website https://antiques.lovetoknow.com/Civil_War_Quilt_Patterns.
Although not everyone believes them, some historians claim slaves used a quilt code to navigate the Underground Railroad. The book “Hidden in Plain View: A Secret Story of Quilts and the Underground Railroad” suggests that quiltmakers would display the quilts letting slaves know when to prepare for and make their escape. A wrench patterned quilt indicated that they should gather tools for the escape. The wagon wheel pattern meant slaves should pack what they planned to take with them.
In doing my research for this column, I learned the names of popular quilt patterns. Here are a few of them — the log cabin, pinwheel, nine patch, double wedding ring, churn dash, eight-pointed star, friendship star, grandmother’s garden, corn and beans, liberty wheel, God’s eye and drunkard’s path.
Each quilt pattern had meaning and purpose. For example, the log cabin symbolized home, warmth, love and security to pioneers. The center square of log cabin quilts are red to representing the hearth, the focal point of life in a cabin or home. The name, Log Cabin, comes from the narrow strips of fabric, or “logs” arranged around the center square, according to the http://www.nps.gov website.
The nine patch quilt served as an introduction to quilting in pioneer days. It is one of the simplest and quickest quilts to sew and was a way to use up every small scrap of fabric available. On the prairie, sewing was an essential skill. Girls learned to sew blocks before they learned to read. At an early age, often as young as three or four, girls were taught to piece simple blocks. Many were very skilled at piecing a block by age five. Edith White, who grew up in the mid-1800s remembered, ‘Before I was five years old, I had pieced one side of a quilt, setting at my mother‟s knee half an hour a day.’ This training was called ‘fireside training.’”
As pioneers traveled West quilts were used as burial shrouds. Information from the website for http://www.nps.gov states, “wood was often scarce for coffins, so families used what was available and appropriate. Wrapping a loved one in a quilt was a way of not only preparing the body for burial, but of giving reassurance to the living that the decreased person was still linked to his or her family.”
More recently Quilts of Valor has sought to honor veterans by giving them quilts. According to their website, the first QOV was awarded by founder Catherine Roberts in November 2003 at Walter Reed Army Medical Center (WRAMC) to a young soldier from Minnesota who had lost his leg in Iraq. The Quilts of Valor movement spread from Catherine Robert’s home in Seaford, Del., across the country. The organization’s original mission statement was “to cover all those service members and veterans wounded physically or psychologically with comforting and healing Quilts of Valor.” Quilts of Valor has given 200,000 quilts to veterans in all 50 states.
A few months ago while at the Nowata County Historical Society Museum I noticed an exhibit about a mystery quilt. Dated Monday, Dec. 18, 1915, the quilt’s mystery lies in the cryptic symbols on each square. As the photo shows some quilt squares contain letters and numbers, while others contain flowers, stars and even a cube. Could the symbols be brands? I’d love to hear from anyone who recognizes a brand. Could they be Native American orthography? I shared the photo with a number of quilters, but no one was sure what the symbols might mean.
“The quilt appears to be a random group of squares and rectangles, fabric could be from military uniforms, olive green navy, black, brown and a tweed strip. It was found in a dog pen in the city of Delaware, by the family of J. J. Adams,” said Nowata Historical Society President Carroll Craun.
If any of the readers have an idea, please email me at rmckee@examiner-enterprise.com.
By Roseanne McKee
Republished with permission of the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise
Osage artist Addie Roanhorse took inspiration for the design for the facade of the Crystal Bridges Museum’s new performing and visual arts complex from a finger-woven belt, which is part of Osage women’s regalia.
Roanhorse was the guest speaker at the first ArtNight of 2019 Tuesday at the Bartlesville Art Association Design Center, 500 S. Dewey Ave.
The complex, Roanhorse said, is located between the Crystal Bridges Museum and the town square in Bentonville, Ark.
“Closer to the town square is an old Kraft cheese plant. They’re keeping the structure … but they are completely gutting it,” she said. “I was asked if I could design a pattern to be etched on glass that would go on the façade of this building. … I’m honored to do it.”
She went to Bentonville, and the director said, “I just want to honor the people who were here pre-colonial. … It felt really good that they wanted to honor Osage people. That was our hunting territory way before any of this.”
She named the design “sway,” explaining her intention that the design would suggest movement and be based on the finger-woven belt worn in Osage women’s regalia.
The belt is fixed at the waist of Osage women’s regalia, and flows down the back.
“Women wear it, and when you dance, it starts swaying. When I was a little girl, I used to think that was the coolest thing. I’d be with my aunties, and we’d be dancing. … it’s just this moment and this feeling that, again, only Osages would truly understand,” Roanhorse explained.
In creating the design, Roanhorse used graphic art principles, simplified the design in the belt and created the suggestion of movement.
“The entryway of the design will actually go up and over in a very large scale. Then there’s the façade on this side, and it goes up five stories. So, it will have the design, really tiny, going all the way up. … At night they’ll shoot movies on it,” Roanhorse said. “When I went and saw it, it was amazing what they’ve done. I got to work with architects in Chicago. … It’s just been a great experience. … They plan on opening February 2020.”
Roanhorse is a graphic designer and photographer for the Osage Nation.
By Roseanne McKee
Republished with permission of the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise
A few months before the P.W. Mercantile opened, Osage artist Addie Roanhorse purchased a two-story, 105 year-old building in downtown Pawhuska with a business partner.
Roanhorse converted the first floor into event space called “Partake,” which she used to create a youth art event in 2018. The second floor is an Airbnb called “The Little Rainsong Loft.”
Roanhorse decided to use the space to have an exhibit featuring the work of children and on the second night an art auction of work by her artist friends to raise money for teachers.
Roanhorse delivered 100 12-by-12 canvases to the elementary and high school students and said, “get these back to me in the next four weeks, and we’re going to have a gallery showing with every one of you.
“We called it the gallery experience,” Roanhorse said.
Because so many wanted to participate in the elementary school, the teachers suggested having the students write paragraphs about why they would like to participate. She received 68 paragraphs from fourth- to sixth-graders.
On the second night they held the art auction. The Pawhuska Chamber of Commerce director, who is also an auctioneer, auctioned the pieces. “It lasted 18 minutes, and we raised $1,875,” she said.
With the funds raised, Roanhorse gave Amazon gift cards to the 57 teachers at the public schools in the area.
“We don’t have art in our schools, and I think that’s a big reason why kids have anxiety. They have stresses in those paragraphs. I started crying when I read them. … you have football and then, you have basketball. But, what about the kids that don’t get that stress reliever out of that or are not very good at it. I know I was terrible. I think it’s important for our kids. Our society is producing very one-sided kids. We can’t send them out into the world and say ‘be successful’ with one-side of your brains.
“But, again, I grew up in this environment where I just, I don’t want to say I took it for granted, but I just didn’t realize. When I had a kid say, ‘well, where do you paint?’ At my studio. ‘Well, what’s a studio?’ ‘What’s this?’ ‘It’s a paint brush.’ ‘Well, where do you get this?’ They really didn’t know. So, just slowly kind of trying to spread the event where we can.
“We’re definitely doing the event again this year,” Roanhorse said with a smile.
By Roseanne McKee
Republished with permission of the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise
Lena C. Larsson, the executive director of the George Miksch Sutton Avian Center, spoke about the Center’s research and conservation projects at Arvest Bank’s Friday Forum in Bartlesville.
The nonprofit was established in Bartlesville 35 years ago. The main facility is on Circle Mountain in Bartlesville on Gap Road on 40 acres.
“Our mission is to use science and education to make conservation happen. …,” she said.
It has set a goal of breeding Attwater chickens, an endangered species.
However, the Center doesn’t have Attwater chickens presently. Instead, it is practicing in-captivity breeding techniques on Greater Prairie Chickens using eggs from Nebraska.
Greater Prairie Chicken breeding
“These past two years we’ve been returning prairie chickens to the area so right now we have a surrogate. We collected eggs in Nebraska and that’s our surrogate breeder stock that we’ve been testing with. We’ve now returned them up to Nebraska these past couple of years,” Larsson said.
Before the prairie chickens are released into the wild, they are placed in acclimation pens for a couple of weeks. The staff camps out in tents near the pens to protect the chickens from predators.
The birds have leg-band transmitters when they are released to track them, she said. The females move outside the area when they breed to prevent inbreeding.
“We had one female that moved 20 miles,” Larsson said.
Masked Bobwhite Quail breeding
Quail are another endangered species breed at the center.
“It’s a cousin of the quail that we have here in Oklahoma. … the males have this rusty red plumage, and they have this dark face,” Larsson said.
The population of the masked bobwhite quail, indigenous to the Sonora Desert in Arizona and Mexico, dwindled beginning with the cattle runs in the late 1800s.
At the Buenos Aires Wildlife Refuge “they’ve restored the habitat, and we’re releasing birds there again. We have about a quarter of the known population here in Bartlesville,” she said.
After a building renovation in 2016, the Center received breeder stock in 2017 and in 2018 started getting eggs. The eggs are marked to track parentage, placed in an incubator and in 22 days they hatch.
“In quail the males take care of the chicks, and they will adopt baby chicks,” she explained.
After the chicks hatch, they are introduced to adult males and families are formed.
The family groups with 10-18 chicks and an adult are transported to Arizona, and released into the wild when the chicks are three weeks old.
Other projects
Other projects at the Sutton Avian Center are bald eagle projects, lead education, white-tailed ptarmigan research, bird surveys/atlases and outreach/education.
One such outreach/education effort, which Audra Fogle, Sutton Avian Center director of development, is most proud, is the Sutton Art Award.
The competition, currently underway, is open to 10th- through 12th-graders. Up to $20,000 is given in cash prizes to students, and their teachers, for telling the conservation story through art and essays.
The work of the top 20 honorees is displayed at NatureWorks Wildlife Art Show in Tulsa, where the art of professionals is also displayed. The Wildlife Art Show reception, which is open to the public, is from 1-3 p.m. Feb. 2 at The Hive Gallery in Jenks.
“If we don’t teach kids to care about our environment and the natural world, it won’t matter what we do because there won’t be any one out there who cares about it enough to save it,” said Fogle.
To learn more about the Sutton Avian Center, visit their website at https://www.suttoncenter.org/.
By Roseanne McKee
Republished with permission of the Bartlesville Examiner-Enterprise
When Elizabeth “Betsey” Schuyler reached the age of 18, prospective suitors began to notice of her. An aide-de-camp of George Washington, Tench Tilghman, came to Albany to attend the Indian council early that summer and wrote in his diary that Elizabeth Schuyler was “brunette with the most good-natured, dark lovely eyes I ever saw, which threw a beam of good temper and benevolence over her entire countenance.”
Her father was serving as a general and a trusted friend of George Washington when another of Washington’s aide-de-camps took notice of her — none other than Alexander Hamilton. Elizabeth Schuyler was about 20 at the time.
Two years later, Hamilton met her again when “Gen. Schuyler had been appointed to Congress and had gone to live at Philadelphia with his family,” Brooks wrote.
During 1779-80, the army headquarters were in Morristown about 50 miles from Schuyler’s Philadelphia home, Brooks said. In November Elizabeth Schuyler visited her aunt, Mrs. Cochran, there. Her arrival was mentioned by Miss Kitty Livingston in letters and diaries, which indicated that she considered Elizabeth “a great addition to society there.”
According to Brooks, George Washington’s household was very lively at that time with two of his aides-de-camp seated at the heads of his table — Tench Tilghman and Alexander Hamilton. Washington and his wife always sat opposite one another in the middle of the table with guests all around them, including an “impetuous young Arron Burr.”
Elizabeth Schuyler appeared to be fond of both Tilghman and Hamilton, but over time she began to spend more of her time with Hamilton. Part of the reason this was possible was that her father, Philip Schuyler became a military adviser and moved his family to Morristown.
Tilghman wrote to his brother of his love for Elizabeth, “Hamilton is a gone man,” Brooks said.
The next summer the couple announced their engagement, and Philip Schuyler expressed his approval in letters to Hamilton. They were married Dec. 14, 1780, in the drawing room of the Schuyler Mansion in Albany where they had met three years prior.
Although the couple was not rich, they were popular. George Washington danced with Mrs. Hamilton and one other woman at his inauguration ball, Brooks said.
The Hamiltons, who lived on Wall Street, were always included in Washington’s dinner and theatre parties, she added.
“There are records of many elaborate dinners given by them, notably one in honor of Thomas Jefferson after his return from France,” Brooks wrote.
Theirs was a happy home. A letter written after the birth of Hamilton’s son, to Mead, one of his army friends, states: “You cannot imagine how domestic I am becoming. I sigh for nothing but the society of my wife and baby.”
Hamilton writes about his reason for resigning his position leading the Treasury Department in George Washington’s Cabinet: “To indulge my ‘domestic happiness’ more freely was the principal motive for relinquishing an office in which it is said I have gained some glory.”
Sadly, the peace of their happy home ended suddenly in July 1804 when Hamilton lost his life to political rival Aaron Burr in a duel.
Following his death, “the terrible sorrow of his family cannot be described,” Brooks wrote.
In an article from the New York State Museum website, http://www.nysm.nysed.gov/ Jenny L. Presnell wrote, “He left Elizabeth and his family virtually destitute.”
Mrs. Hamilton raised her children and never remarried. She spent the balance of her life defending her husband against his critics and preserving his papers and letters, which were published in 1850-51 by his son, John Church Hamilton, Presnell said.
“The death of her father four months after her husband’s provided her with some financial relief through her inheritance of property and money. She was able to repurchase The Grange, which had been sold at public auction. She also petitioned the government for her husband’s army pension that he had waived. Not granted until 1837 through a special act of Congress, her petition provided her with $30,000 and included land,” Presnell wrote.
According to Presnell, Elizabeth Schuyler founded orphanages in New York City and Washington, D.C., took orphans into her own home and held a position in the New York Orphan Asylum Society.
Elizabeth Schuyler lived in Washington, D.C. in her later years and died at the age of 97. She was buried next to her husband at the Trinity Church graveyard in New York City.