The Lost Quilter (36 page)

All through the next day they traveled southeast, slowly and cautiously, pulling off the road into the thick underbrush at the sound of other travelers. Joanna alone stepped out from hiding twice to speak with colored folk—once to a slave traveling on an errand for his master, another time to a free colored family evacuating in advance of the approaching army. Both told her that Hilton Head wasn’t a safe destination. “You want Port Royal,” the free colored man told her. “That’s where all the freed slaves from the barrier islands are going. That’s your best bet. Yankee soldiers and abolitionists setting up things right nicely for freed slaves, so I hear.”

“Have you heard anything about a colored army?” Joanna asked him. “You know where they might be?”

The man shook his head. “I heard something about that in late spring, but not much since. If there’s a colored army, I don’t know where you might find it.”

But he had heard of it, which meant that Titus hadn’t been chasing some fool story. She would find the colored regiment, and there she would find her beloved.

In midafternoon the clouds burst open and rain poured down in sheets. The children huddled in the cart beneath a canopy of her quilts, but the soft covers quickly soaked through and did little to keep the rain off. Before long the cart wheels slowed and churned through ruts in the muddy road. Joanna walked along
side to lighten the load and urge the mare forward, but it was a long, hard slog through ankle-deep mud, and they made little progress.

Eventually she was forced to admit defeat. Although she was anxious to get as far away from the Harpers and Charleston as quickly as possible, she knew they could go no further until the cloudburst ended and the muddy roads dried.

She found a rocky place more or less free of mud beneath a cluster of oaks a few yards off the road. After managing to coax the mare over to it, she unhitched the harness, picketed the mare near a patch of grass, and urged the children to take shelter beneath the cart. They obeyed without complaint, shivering and gobbling up the last of the bread and cheese as they sat cross-legged on the hard-packed earth. Exhausted, Joanna joined them, though the shelter would do her little good, soaked through as she was. Ruthie climbed onto her lap and clung to her so tightly that Joanna doubted she had the strength to pry her loose. Eventually the children slept, and Joanna, overcome with fatigue, felt herself drifting, fading.

She woke to the sound of voices and rustling underbrush. The rain had stopped and night had fallen. The children were awake and alert, watching her, waiting for her to tell them what to do. Adam began to speak, but Hannah slipped her hand over his mouth before he uttered a sound.

“Wheel ruts,” a man called out. “Fresh. They go into the bushes.”

Joanna’s heart pounded at the sound of branches being forced aside, heavy boots in mud.
Please let them pass,
she prayed.
Please don’t let them see us.
Torchlight flickered on the ground, and she knew all was lost.

Four pairs of boots halted in front of the cart; rifles cocked.

“You, under the cart,” another man said. “Come out from there with your hands up.”

Shaking, biting her lips together to keep from sobbing, Joanna rocked onto her knees, kissed Ruthie, and passed her to Hannah. “You listen good,” she whispered. “You the oldest, so you got to take care of these little ones. You understand?”

Wide-eyed, Hannah nodded.

“Soon as I go, you take Adam and Ruthie and run fast as you can the other way through them bushes there. Get far away but go quiet. You hide yourself good until morning, then you get these children to Port Royal. Don’t trust nobody but other colored folk until you get there. Stay out of sight. When you get to Port Royal, find a nice Yankee lady and she’ll get someone to look after you.”

“What about you?”

“Time’s running out,” the man called. “Come out now or we’ll drag you out.”

She could not let the men see the children; it was their only hope. “Do as I say,” she told Hannah, and waited for the girl’s answering nod. She touched each of the children’s faces briefly. Oh, Lord, protect them. The fear and confusion in their eyes—

Joanna took a deep breath and extended her hands into the open. “Don’t shoot. I’m comin’ out.” With one last warning glance to Hannah, she crawled out from beneath the cart. She stood and instinctively straightened her skirts and headscarf. Then, though her heart was pounding so fiercely she was sure the men would hear her terror, she planted her feet and wordlessly faced the four soldiers, who slowly lowered their rifles.

“Looks like we found ourselves some contraband,” one of the men said, his grin a flash of white behind a dirty red beard.

“Evening, miss,” said another. Joanna recognized his voice as
that of the man who had ordered them to come out from hiding. “I expect you’re a runaway.”

Joanna thought of the crumpled pass, soiled and soaking wet in her pocket. If the ink had not smeared beyond legibility, he might accept it. He might believe her if she told him that she had become hopelessly lost in the rainstorm, that she was trying desperately to get back to her mistress. But if they believed her, they would send her off toward West Grove. They might even insist upon escorting her there in order to collect whatever reward they might have coming. Then what would become of the children? Miss Evangeline would order her beaten until she revealed where they had gone, and eventually the overseer might drag the truth out of her.

Her only hope was to delay the soldiers long enough for the children to make their escape. And if she provoked these soldiers into killing her now, before they questioned her, before she was bound and gagged and pulled along behind a horse all the way to West Grove, before the Harpers could summon the overseer with his whip—so be it. The children would be free, and she would no longer be a slave.

“Yes, suh,” she said defiantly. “I am a runaway. I’m on my way to the Yankees at Port Royal. I’m done with bein’ anyone’s slave. I am a woman. I don’t belong to no one but myself and the Lord.”

“Is that so?” drawled the man with the red beard, but he fell silent at a sharp gesture from another soldier.

Joanna was beyond caring what happened to her. She had to buy time for the children to flee. They would carry her hopes with them. They would keep breathing, long after slavery ended and all colored folk were free.

“Yes, that’s so,” Joanna shot back. “Maybe today you can keep me from getting to freedom, but you can’t stop freedom from
comin’ to me. The Union army be comin’ this way soon, and they got colored men fightin’ too. You can try but you can’t stop so many folks all fightin’ for their freedom. It’s coming because it’s got to come. You can be sure of that. And the only way you can stop me from runnin’ is to kill me right here and right now, because I ain’t goin’ to stop. Take me back and I just run again. I gonna run and run and run until I get my freedom. Long as I keep breathin’, I gonna run for my freedom.”

She glared at the astonished men, breathless and defiant, listening for her children, hoping they had slipped away into the forest, that they had obeyed her, that somehow through some miracle she would see them again.

Keep breathing,
she told herself, her thoughts an echo of Titus’s voice. She wanted to, but she feared her next breath or the next or the one after that would be her last.

She had held out as long as she could.

“I don’t doubt for a moment that you’re determined to be free.” The soldier’s voice had lost its sharpness, and his eyes were kind. “But you can stop running now. I’m James Conner of the Sixth Connecticut Infantry. This is Union territory, and you’re a free woman.”

S
eated at her father’s oak desk, Sylvia spread out the documents Summer Sullivan had sent from Chicago, printouts of old census records the young historian had found online through a genealogy website. Summer had found Josiah Chester in federal census records from 1850, 1860, and 1870, but had been unable to locate a slave census for Greenfields. Summer had also found many Chester families in South Carolina and Georgia, but it was impossible to determine which, if any, were the relatives to whom Josiah Chester had sold Joanna. Indeed, as Summer had pointed out in her accompanying letter, those relations might have had a different surname, in which case searching for other Chester families would be a wasted effort.

“I’m not going to give up,” Summer had written. “I’ll ask some of my professors to recommend other resources. If I uncover anything new, I’ll let you know.”

But Summer was busy with her graduate studies, and Sylvia knew she didn’t have much time to devote to Sylvia’s request. She had already found so much: the census records, the map of
Greenfields, a few slim leads that might lead to answers. Sylvia resolved to be patient. Summer never gave up on an intriguing puzzle once it captured her interest, and Sylvia knew she would explore every possibility until she either found the answer or determined that the historical record could not provide it.

Sylvia had waited years for the fresh leads the bundle of letters in the antique desk had unexpectedly discovered. She could wait a little while longer.

She was arranging Summer’s documents into a neat pile, preparing to file them, when Sarah entered the office carrying a slender, sturdy cardboard envelope that was so flat it appeared to be empty. “Grace Daniels overnighted this to you,” said Sarah, “but I’m not convinced there’s anything inside.”

Sylvia took the envelope, which was so light that she was inclined to believe it was indeed empty. “Goodness. I can’t imagine what Grace would need to send me so urgently that she would go to this expense. Camp registrations aren’t due for months.”

Sylvia peeled back the tab and withdrew a colorful brochure for a quilt exhibit. Grace was a museum curator as well as a quilt artist, and it wasn’t unusual for her to let Sylvia know about new, intriguing shows, especially if she or one of her friends were directing them. But the postal service or email had always served Grace perfectly well before.

“The Quilts of North Freedom,” Sarah read over Sylvia’s shoulder. “I think I’ve heard about them. In
Quilter’s Newsletter Magazine,
maybe?”

They sounded familiar to Sylvia as well. She studied the photographs, admiring a series of scrap quilts that seemed improvisational rather than carefully planned, with bold colors and striking arrangements of squares, bars, and triangles. Then she turned to the front of the brochure and read the story of the quiltmakers,
members of an enduring quilting circle from the small rural town of North Freedom, South Carolina.

The quilting circle, the Freedom Quilters, had come into being shortly after the end of the Civil War on an isolated barrier island that had once been the site of a prosperous cotton plantation. The founder of the group, Joanna North, was a former slave who had worked for the Union army as a laundress, nurse, and literacy teacher from 1862 through the end of the war. Afterward she accepted a government grant of forty acres of land on Edisto Island, where she raised five children and helped create a thriving community of former slaves. After the boll weevil destroyed the Sea Island cotton industry, Joanna North trained her daughters and other neighbor women as seamstresses and laundresses so that they could become self-supporting. The Freedom Quilters evolved from her early lessons, as the women continued to meet for quilting, literacy classes, prayer, and friendship even after they had finished their training. As the years passed, the women brought their daughters into the circle, and then their granddaughters, and on and on up to contemporary times. Since until recently the community had been relatively isolated, their quilting evolved in a unique style, departing dramatically from popular quilting trends elsewhere in the country. Perhaps most significantly, every quilt completed by a Freedom Quilter since the founding of their circle contained one important, identifying feature whose symbolism had been lost to memory: a pattern of four triangles, one large and three small.

Sylvia gasped in recognition as she examined close-up photos of several examples of the signature motif.

Though the arrangements varied from precise to abstract, the triangles were unmistakably minor variations upon the Birds in the Air block.

“What is it? What’s wrong?” Sarah asked. Wordlessly Sylvia
passed her the brochure and waited, dumbfounded, for her young friend to reach the same conclusion. After a few moments Sarah placed her hand on her gently rounded tummy and sat down. “Birds in the Air.”

Sylvia nodded.

Sarah studied the brochure, shaking her head in disbelief. “Do you think this Joanna North is the Joanna that your great-great-aunt Gerda knew, the woman we’ve been calling Joanna Frederick?”

“If not, the appearance of the same block is a striking coincidence.” Sylvia remembered the envelope, checked to see if Grace had included anything else, and discovered within a single sheet, a letter from her friend.

“Dear Sylvia,” Grace wrote, “there’s so much more to this story than any show brochure could possibly contain. It defies letters, emails, and phone calls too. How would you feel about meeting me in Charleston so we can see and hear it for ourselves, together?”

Two weeks later, Sylvia and Sarah arrived at the Charleston International Airport and rented a car for the forty-mile drive south and west to Edisto Island. Grace Daniels had arrived the previous afternoon with her daughter, Justine, and they were waiting to meet Sylvia and Sarah in the lobby of their lovely inn, a restored antebellum plantation house. Sylvia was pleased to see that her friend was in good spirits and in even better health than the previous August, when Grace had returned to Elm Creek Quilt Camp for her annual reunion with a special group of beloved quilting friends. Her doctor had placed her on a clinical trial for a new treatment for her multiple sclerosis, and it appeared
to be going remarkably well. Two years ago Grace had required a wheelchair to move from room to room, but the next year she had gotten by with only a walker, and now it appeared that she could make do with a single cane and an occasional assist from Justine, a strikingly lovely woman in her thirties, who had been blessed with her mother’s strong cheekbones, sharp intellect, and rich brown skin. Unlike Grace, who favored short, natural curls, Justine wore her hair in dozens of fine, long braids tied back in a batik headwrap. She kept a protective watch over her mother but balanced carefully between stepping in when needed and letting Grace complete tasks she could handle just fine on her own. Only Grace herself seemed prouder of each bit of independence she had regained.

The women exchanged news about mutual friends, the manor, Grace’s work at the de Young Museum in San Francisco, and Justine’s son, Joshua, but catching up quickly was all they spared time for in their eagerness to meet Grace’s colleague from the local historical society. As soon as Sylvia and Sarah checked in and left their suitcases in their rooms, they climbed into Sarah’s rental car and set out for the Edisto Island Folk Museum to learn more about Joanna North and the Freedom Quilters.

“Sophia Lawrence told me that the Quilts of North Freedom have been part of a touring exhibit for the past four years,” said Grace. “They return to Edisto Island only one month out of the year.”

“We’re fortunate the timing worked out so perfectly for us,” Sylvia remarked as Sarah pulled into a parking spot in front of the museum. Her heart fluttered and she took a deep breath to calm her nerves. The answers to all her questions—and the questions that had plagued her great-great-aunt Gerda until her death—could lie just beyond those museum doors.

Her eyes met Sarah’s as they climbed out of the car. Sarah, her long shirt all but concealing her early pregnancy, threw Sylvia an encouraging grin as she hefted her tote bag to her shoulder and gave it a protective pat. Sylvia smiled, knowing Sarah would allow no harm to come to its precious contents.

Sophia Lawrence greeted them in the vestibule, embracing Grace like a long-lost friend and clasping Sylvia’s hand as if she were an honored guest. “I admire your work very much,” she said, her salt-and-pepper dreadlocks brushing her shoulders. “I keep an old American Quilter’s Society calendar open to
Sewickley Sunrise
on the wall of my office.”

“So within your museum it’s always May of 1982,” Sylvia remarked.

“May of 1982, December of 1861—we try to preserve all significant eras here,” replied Sophia. “But from what Grace has told me, it’s the years of the Civil War and Reconstruction that interest you most.”

Sophia led them into a spacious gallery where the quilts from the brochure as well as several others fashioned in the Freedom Quilters’ unique style were displayed. As they toured the exhibit, Sophia shared what she knew about the creator of each quilt, the materials she had used—almost always scraps preserved from worn clothing or remnants from a now-defunct local fabric mill—and the quilt’s provenance. Most of the contemporary quilts had come from the artists’ own personal collections, while the antique pieces had been donated or loaned by the quiltmakers’ descendants. In recent years, media attention and the respect of the art world had brought the current Freedom Quilters a measure of national success that the founders of the quilting circle would have found astonishing. They had quilted to beautify their homes, to make frugal use of worn clothing, and to take pleasure in creative
work. They never would have imagined that their handiwork would be displayed in museums, sold for astonishing prices, admired by collectors, and praised in art reviews in magazines and newspapers from coast to coast.

“If not for Joanna North’s vision,” Sophia said, “these quilts would never have been created, their unique style would never have evolved, and so much beauty would have been lost to the world.”

“Tell Sylvia what you’ve learned about Joanna North,” Grace asked. “But please start at the beginning. I wanted her to hear the story from you.”

“There’s so much to tell,” said Sophia, smiling. “We’re fortunate that Joanna was literate, that she taught her children to read and write, and that she kept a journal.”

“A journal?” exclaimed Sylvia.

“Yes, but unfortunately only a few pages have survived the years.” Sophia indicated a glass display case on the opposite wall. “They’re very precious to us, as you can imagine. But even so, most of what we know of Joanna’s history has come down through the oral tradition, stories passed down from daughter to daughter.”

Born in Virginia, Sophia explained, Joanna had been sold down south after a failed escape attempt. She worked as a seamstress and laundress in the household of Stephen Chester, one of the most prosperous Sea Island cotton planters in South Carolina. On the Chester plantation, Oak Grove, Joanna married and had a child, a daughter named Ruth. Given to Chester’s eldest daughter as a wedding gift, Joanna and Ruth were brought to Charleston to serve her new master and mistress, Colonel Robert and Mrs. Evangeline Harper. Family lore told that during the early years of the war, Joanna had served as a spy for the Union by passing
along valuable military secrets gleaned from Colonel Harper’s office. However, she had not known her Union contact’s real name and thus after the war she was unable to prove her record of service.

“We have court documents detailing her fight to receive the military pension which she had rightfully earned,” Sophia said. “Eventually the government awarded her and her heirs a modest annual stipend for the years she spent working for the Union army at Port Royal as a laundress, but nothing for her time as a spy in Charleston, which was by far the more dangerous duty. But I’m getting ahead of myself.”

At some point during the spring or summer of 1862, Sophia continued, Joanna’s husband ran away from the Chesters and managed to get word to Joanna that he intended to join the African-American regiment formed by General David Hunter on Hilton Head after the fall of Port Royal. Joanna had never lost her thirst for freedom and she was determined to reunite her family, so when the Harpers decided to evacuate the city, she managed to slip away in the chaos, bringing with her Ruth and her two adopted children, Hannah and Adam. They managed to make their way to Port Royal, where Joanna discovered that her husband had indeed joined Hunter’s African-American regiment, but that it had been disbanded under charges that Hunter had acted without authorization and that his soldiers, former slaves all, had not volunteered but had been forced to enlist.

For years afterward Joanna had struggled in vain to discover what had become of her husband. All that was known for certain was that for many months he had served the Union army as a laborer, the only service available to African-American men at the time, but inconclusive evidence suggested that he had later joined up with the Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry, an
African-American regiment led by Colonel Robert Gould Shaw, and had died in the ill-fated but valorous attack on Fort Wagner.

“According to family tradition, Titus Chester was an expert hunter,” said Sophia. “He would not have been content to dig ditches and pitch tents when he knew how to handle a rifle so well. In one of Ruth’s surviving letters, she recounts a visit from Lewis Henry Douglass, a sergeant major from the Fifty-fourth, and says he told Joanna that Titus had fought bravely and died with honor.”

“Lewis Henry Douglass,” Grace said. “Frederick Douglass’s son?”

Sophia nodded. “That’s correct. Apparently he kept in touch with the family for several years afterward, and Joanna probably would not have received her government stipend without his intervention.”

As Sylvia listened, tears of joy and wistful discovery gathered and threatened to fall. She wondered if Joanna North had ever met Frederick Douglass himself. The Joanna that had come to Elm Creek Manor had learned to read after being inspired by Douglass’s
Autobiography.
If these two Joannas were one and the same, it would have been fitting if she had eventually met the man whose life had helped shape her own.