Underground Railroad Quilts was Help with quilt block name origins

Lia, Yes!! Do get it on Snopes.
Your assessment is mild compared to what Merry Stahel wrote when Tobin's book
first came out.

A woman in Racine, WI, was so taken with Tobin's thesis and the book that she
created a whole quilt project using the patterns Tobin references. I saw the
exhibit (at the Lemon Street Gallery in Kenosha, WI) in July. Nice quilts.

However, it's a good thing I was not asked my opinion of the thesis.

Nann
in Winthrop Harbor, Illinois

Thanks for the note of support. The trouble with the diehard believers
comes from the fact that it is just such an appealing myth. I know when
I first read a review of Tobin's book I couldn't wait to read it. It
had everything-- quilts, oral tradition, good guys (escaping slaves)
triumphing over bad guys (bounty hunters). No wonder there have been
more books perpetuating the myth and even museum exhibits referring back
to the original premise. People WANT to belive something so appealing.

In truth, the underground railroad was never as organized as we like to
think. There are tons of inaccuracies in the Tobin book. There is NO
corroborating evidence of any sort despite diaries, letters, WIP
interviews with former slaves. All we've got on the theory is one woman
who can no longer be reached who told another woman that it was part of
her oral history. And yet no one else seems to have heard of it until
they read the book.

I keep wondering about writing it up for the Snopes website or if
Skeptic Magazine would take on an item concerning history, not science.
Better yet, I wish Barbara Brackman, who has written articles on the
subject and is such a fine quilt historian, would publish a rebuttal book.

--Lia

If you go here, you'll see our discussion and my somewhat scathing review G
of the book:


http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...rriet+Tubman&b
tnG=Google+Search&meta=group%3Drec.crafts.textiles .quilting

Also - in my "enthusiasm" to de-bunk, I said first one and then the other used
a white sheet as a signal. The person who used it as a signal was Harriet
Tubman, not Sojourner Truth. However, Sojourner was the quilter, I think.
(Oh, Lord, now I'm confused...dang, I need to go read their autobiographies
AGAIN!)

Merry
Some mistakes are too much fun to only make once
http://www.stardancerpress.com/MerryStahel/
http://community.webshots.com/user/merrystahel

Nbhilyard wrote:
Lia, Yes!! Do get it on Snopes.
Your assessment is mild compared to what Merry Stahel wrote when Tobin's book
first came out.

What a thought! I'd never considered how people got articles on the
Snopes web site. I'll look into it.

--Lia

MerryStahel wrote:
If you go here, you'll see our discussion and my somewhat scathing review G
of the book:


http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...rriet+Tubman&b
tnG=Google+Search&meta=group%3Drec.crafts.textiles .quilting

I tried, but I got a "not found" message. I'm not sure if it is my
system or some other trouble. I'm very interested in your review
because I'm thinking calling Tobin's thesis an appealing urban myth and
getting it written up on Snopes would be satisfying for me. (Or would
you like to do it? I don't want to horn in on anyone's territory. Is
it something that we all might do together?)

--Lia

In article Dp93b.276963$Ho3.36568@sccrnsc03,
Julia Altshuler wrote:

MerryStahel wrote:
If you go here, you'll see our discussion and my somewhat scathing review
G
of the book:


http://groups.google.com/groups?hl=e...rriet+Tubman&b
tnG=Google+Search&meta=group%3Drec.crafts.textiles .quilting

I tried, but I got a "not found" message. I'm not sure if it is my
system or some other trouble. I'm very interested in your review
because I'm thinking calling Tobin's thesis an appealing urban myth and
getting it written up on Snopes would be satisfying for me. (Or would
you like to do it? I don't want to horn in on anyone's territory. Is
it something that we all might do together?)

--Lia


Weird to get a "not found" for the archives. You went to google groups
and did it? Well...here is the original, but not all the replys.

marcella

--------------

The point is - WHY did no other slave EVER mention it in their writings
or oral traditions?

If you've EVER done research on the subject - and TRUST ME, I have done
EXTENSIVE research on slavery, and have access to lots of books...why did
people like Sojourner Truth and Harriet Tubman, and Alan Pinkerton and
countless other Underground Conductors NEVER mention this particular
signal - when they DID mention OTHERS?

Barbara Brackmann is an historian. Not only did she write about Civil
War quilts - she STUDIED the time period extensively.

Jacqueline Tobin is NOT an historian. She took ONE person's story as
FACT. She has been UNABLE to substantiate it in ANY way, and OTHER
historians have not found any evidence to corroborate her Master's
Thesis paper, either.

Yep - the book was to get her Master's Thesis. And her story came from a
RELATIVE of the slave, NOT from the slave herself. The person who TOLD
her the story also DIED, before anyone else could talk to her about it.
JT also had no taped conversations, only her own notes, which she took,
because she said the woman didn't want to be recorded. Interestingly -
the woman supposedly TOLD JT the story, so it could be SAVED FOR
POSTERITY.

If you'd like to READ some REAL slaves' oral traditions - written down
by the WPA Project in the early 1930's-1940's - when actual slaves were
STILL alive - go to the Library Of Congress website, type in WPA
Writer's Project and then do a search for SLAVE.

In addition - may I recommend the EXCELLENT Mary Chesnut diary, written
DURING the Civil War, and including many passages on how her house SLAVE
saved her life. Another good book is SIX SLAVE NARRATIVES -some of it
written by slaves who were EDUCATED by their masters. Also look into
the works of Frederick Douglass - educated by his master and later
freed, to become a guest speaker on the issue or slavery in the North
DURING the Civil War.

And I mentioned Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth - both slaves, both
educated in later years, after being Underground Railroad Conductors -
and both writing and speaking extensively on the issue of slavery. You
will not find ONE instance where a quilt was used as a signal...and
Harriet Tubman conducted more runs than any other slave...


Merry