All That She Carried
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20. Harriet Jacobs, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861; repr., Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1987). Elizabeth Keckley, Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 1988). Louisa Picquet, The Octoroon: A Tale of Southern Life (New York: published by the author, 1861), 12, electronic ed., Documenting the American South, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, docsouth.unc.edu/neh/picquet/picquet.html. Eliza Potter, A Hairdresser’s Experience in High Life (1859; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 1991), 18, 27. Mamie Garvin Fields with Karen Fields, Lemon Swamp and Other Places: A Carolina Memoir (New York: Free Press, 1983). Melnea Cass, transcript, Black Women’s Oral History Project, OH-31; T-32, Schlesinger Library, Harvard Radcliffe Institute. I am grateful to Sharony Green, a scholar of Black women’s history in Cincinnati, who suggested that I consider Picquet’s and Potter’s narratives for this study.
21. My approach, a shared one in Black women’s historical scholarship, takes Black women of 150 years ago not just as eyewitnesses but also as intellectuals. As Elsa Barkley Brown argues: “African-American women have indeed created their own lives, shaped their own meanings, and are the voices of authority of their own experience.” Brown, “African-American Women’s Quilting,” 927. In addition, I draw this approach of centering Black women as intellectuals in and on the past from Mia E. Bay, Farah J. Griffin, Martha S. Jones, and Barbara D. Savage, Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015).
22. Darlene Clark Hine formulated the classic insight that African American women have made a practice of shielding their inner lives in an article turned book chapter, “Rape and the Inner Lives of Black Women: Thoughts on the Culture of Dissemblance.” See Darlene Clark Hine, Hine Sight: Black Women and the Re-Construction of American History (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 37–48. Additional written sources have aided in building a history of the sack. Even with the loss of records from General William Tecumseh Sherman’s torching of Columbia, South Carolina, the state capital, in 1865, the ledgers, journals, inventory books, and recipe books of South Carolina’s elite planter class overflow southern archive shelves. Anthropologist Mark Auslander pioneered research on the object and the family, and his work is meticulous. I conducted independent research, which included hiring genealogists Jesse Bustos-Nelson (based in Charleston) and Hannah Scruggs (at the NMAAHC). My inquiry, with their vital assistance, has yielded findings that corroborate the arguments and suppositions of Auslander’s initial genealogical work. See Auslander, “Tracing Ashley’s Sack,” Cultural Environments blog, January 2016; his “Slavery’s Traces: In Search of Ashley’s Sack,” Southern Spaces blog, November 29, 2016, southernspaces.org/2016/slaverys-traces-search-ashleys-sack; and his “Clifton Family and Ashley’s Sack,” Cultural Environments blog, December 30, 2016, culturalenvironments.blogspot.com/2016/.
23. The literary scholar Megan Sweeney shared this response with me during a series of conversations about both of our fabric-focused books in 2017–18.
Chapter 1: Ruth’s Record
1. Arthur Middleton and Ruth Jones, Application of Marriage 387059, June 25, 1918, Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Marriage License Bureau, Philadelphia.
2. While scholars have reconstructed the demographic, social, economic, political, and cultural dimensions of this mass movement, they have not considered what we might make of a migration of things. Isabel Wilkerson’s commentary in her chapter “The Things They Left Behind” contends beautifully with natural things (trees—including pecans—and flower gardens and birdcalls), cultural practices (cooking, language, music), ritual (communal gatherings), and relatives, but not as directly with material goods. Isabel Wilkerson, The Warmth of Other Suns (New York: Vintage, 2010), 9–10, 538; “Things” quote, 238–41. Tera W. Hunter, To ’Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors After the Civil War (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997), 232, 217.
3. “Assert identities”: Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, The Age of Homespun: Objects and Stories in the Creation of an American Myth (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2001), 133, 138. For more on how women passed down clothing as assets, see Martha R. Miller, The Needle’s Eye: Women and Work in the Age of Revolution (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2006), 28.
4. Arlette Farge, The Allure of the Archives (1989; repr., New Haven: Yale University Press, 2013), 97.
5. Historical interpretations are always in motion. This statement refers to the current moment, as new discoveries may yet come to light about Rose, Ashley, Ruth, and the sack. DNA and polymer testing (“polymer” in this case refers to natural polymers such as silk, wool, and wood, rather than the more familiar definition signifying plastics only), in particular, have not yet been done on the sack and might yield illuminating results about its past contents and family linkages.
6. In its reliance on childhood memory and transgenerational memory, the sack is similar to the Federal Writers’ Project interviews with formerly enslaved people (the Works Progress Administration, or WPA, Slave Narratives), which solicited memories of slavery several decades after the system had been abolished. Many of the interviewees were children when they experienced bondage, which cast their memories in a particular, often golden light; many also recounted memories of things that happened to their parents and grandparents and could not have been directly observed. Historians use these sources but often in batches (comparing, for instance, all of the narratives from a state or region rather than relying on just one) and with an admittance of the narratives’ limitations.
7. David W. Blight, Frederick Douglass: Prophet of Freedom (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2018), 24. Memory is fallible and sifted through the biased filters of individual investment and psychological need. But written documents are faulty, too, which is why researchers gather as many records as possible pursuant to their topics for comparison. As Daniel Lord Smail points out, documents housed in archives are often themselves fashioned of the memories of those who created them in their time. Imagine, for instance, a diary in which the writer must recall her day or an interview in which an interviewee is called on to answer questions about the past. Smail, On Deep History and the Human Brain (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2008), 56.
8. “Archivally unknown”: Julia Laite, “The Emmet’s Inch: Small History in a Digital Age,” Journal of Social History (2020): 1–27, 17. “Second death”: Farge, Allure, 121.
9. Heather Andrea Williams, Help Me to Find My People: The African American Search for Family Lost in Slavery (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012), 2.
10. Paul Gardullo, NMAAHC, email exchange with Tiya Miles, February 19, 2018.
11. In this popular Monday evening show on PBS, everyday people bring in personal treasures and extraordinary finds for evaluation by expert appraisers. Barry Garron, “ ‘Antiques Roadshow’ Tweaks Formula to Keep Viewers Watching,” Current, December 5, 2018.
12. Ben Goggins, “Looking for Pearls: Ashley’s Sack, Davenport Dolls Give Insight into Lives of Slaves,” Savannah Now, January 28, 2016, savannahnow.com/article/20160128/LIFESTYLE/301289786. Mark Auslander, “Tracing Ashley’s Sack,” Cultural Environments blog, January 2016. The staff at the Middleton Place Foundation have conveyed to me that the donor wishes to remain anonymous. Tiya Miles, email exchange with Tracey Todd, Mary Edna Sullivan, and Jeff Neale, September 2018. Adam Parker, “Slave Child Torn from Mom Filled Sack with Love,” Spartanburg Herald-Journal, April 16, 2007, C1, C3.
13. Miles, email exchange with Tracey Todd, Mary Edna Sullivan, and Jeff Neale, September 2018.
14. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Ivan Gaskell, Sara J. Schechner, and Sarah Anne Carter, eds., Tangible Things: Making History Through Objects (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 2. This is not the first time a precious fabric has
been dumped into a rag box and later uncovered. In 1977, two museum curators found what was then the oldest surviving piece of clothing known to researchers while digging through “heaps of dirty ‘funerary rags’ ” stored at the University College of London. They identified it as an Egyptian linen shirt dating back to 3000 b.c. Elizabeth Barber, Women’s Work: The First 20,000 Years; Women, Cloth, and Society in Early Times (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994), 136.
15. Tiya Miles, email exchange with Mary Edna Sullivan, November 22, 2019.
16. Miles, email exchange with Tracey Todd, Mary Edna Sullivan, and Jeff Neale, September 2018. Miles, interview with Mary Edna Sullivan, November 13, 2018, Middleton Place. The first detailed description of Ashley’s sack was written for the show Grandeur Preserved: Masterworks Presented by Historic Charleston Foundation, loan exhibition for the 57th Annual Winter Antiques Show, January 21–30, 2011. Catalog text draft for Grandeur Preserved, 2011, given to Tiya Miles by Mary Edna Sullivan, March 29, 2017.
17. Goggins, “Looking for Pearls.” This early trajectory of the sack’s movements derives from Mark Auslander’s work. Mark Auslander, “Tracing Ashley’s Sack,” Cultural Environments blog, January 7, 2016, culturalenvironments.blogspot.com/2016/01/; “Clifton Family and Ashley’s Sack,” December 30, 2016, culturalenvironments.blogspot.com/2016/. Mark Auslander, “Slavery’s Traces: In Search of Ashley’s Sack,” Southern Spaces blog, November 29, 2016, southernspaces.org/2016/slaverys-traces-search-ashleys-sack. For more early media coverage of the sack, see the following stories: Leslie Cantu, “ ‘Filled with My Love’: Slave Artifact to Be Displayed in New Smithsonian Museum,” Summerville Journal Scene, December 29, 2015, www.postandcourier.com/journal-scene/news/filled-with-my-love-slave-artifact-to-be-displayed-in-new-smithsonian-museum/article_f2a0eb0b-2a8a-5a62-a9a9-78f626e0f6ba.html. Vera Bergengruen, “This Scrap of Cloth Is One of the Saddest Artifacts at New DC Museum,” McClatchy.com, September 23, 2016, www.mcclatchydc.com/news/nation-world/national/article103443792.html. Heath Ellison, “The Mystery Behind an Intriguing Lowcountry Slave Object, ‘Ashley’s Sack,’ May Have Been Solved,” Charleston Observer, December 12, 2016, charlestoncitypaper.com/TheBattery/archives/2016/12/12/the-mystery-behind-an-intriguing-lowcountry-slave-object-ashleys-sack-may-have-been-solved. Bo Peterson, “Mystery Remains in Haunting Slave Sack,” Post and Courier, January 7, 2017, postandcourier.com/news/mystery-remains-in-haunting-slave-sack/article_932f3362-d431-11e6-a96c-cbe5336e7237.html. Erin Blakemore, “Show and Tell: A Sack Filled with an Enslaved Mother’s Love, Mental Floss, January 27, 2017, mentalfloss.com/article/91583/show-tell-sack-filled-enslaved-mothers-love. Melanie Eversley, “Slavery-Era Embroidery Excites Historians, Evokes Heartbreak of Its Time,” USA Today, February 16, 2017, usatoday.com/story/news/2017/02/16/slavery-era-embroidery-excites-historians-invokes-heartbreak-its-time/96702424/. Sarah Taylor, “ ‘Ashley’s Sack’ Gathers National Attention,” Central Washington University Observer, March 1, 2017, cwuobserver.com/9449/news/ashleys-sack-gathers-national-attention/. Dionne Gleaton, “Ashley’s Sack: ‘National Treasure’ of Slavery Era Has Local Ties,” Orangeburg, S.C., Times and Democrat, June 20, 2017, thetandd.com/lifestyles/ashleys-sack-national-treasure-of-slavery-era-has-local-ties/article_1f7689d3-275b-5f1c-9841-20d7a74e420f.html. Tammy Ayer, “A Stitch in Time: CWU Professor Tracks History of Embroidered Seed Sack to People Held in Slavery on South Carolina Plantation,” Yakima Herald, November 22, 2017, www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/a-stitch-in-time-cwu-professor-tracks-history-of-embroidered/article_9f2d8aba-c298-11e6-8653-f7f4a912b32a.html.
Academic studies written about this artifact are few but valuable. University of Pennsylvania historian Heather Williams was the first to publish about the object when she highlighted Ashley’s sack in the Epilogue of her wrenching book on the separation of Black families during slavery. Mark Auslander, a cultural anthropologist of Africa and former museum director at Central Washington University and then Michigan State University, was the first to track the genealogy of the family named on the sack and to interview descendants. He researched the sack intensively in 2016–17, served as a consultant to Smithsonian curators, and generously published his early findings online. Auslander brought the sack to national attention, and his work has been indispensable to my research. Williams, Help Me to Find My People, 196–97. Auslander, “Tracing Ashley’s Sack,” “Slavery’s Traces,” and “Clifton Family and Ashley’s Sack.” Art historian Jennifer Van Horn used the sack as an example of “affective objects” in her riveting article about enslaved people and artistic iconoclasm that took Civil War–era Charleston as its major site of investigation: Jennifer Van Horn, “ ‘The Dark Iconoclast’: African Americans’ Artistic Resistance in the Civil War South,” Art Bulletin 99, no. 4 (2017): 133–67, 157–58.
18. Tiya Miles, tour and interview with Mary Elliott, NMAAHC, Washington, D.C., February 10, 2017. It seems worth noting that Elliott is the only African American person in this preservation and interpretation chain. Miles, email exchange with Tracey Todd, Mary Edna Sullivan, and Jeff Neale, September 2018. While the sack was examined through a high-powered microscope by Mary Edna Sullivan, it has not been subjected to scientific testing, which might verify or disprove what items were packed inside and if there are bodily fluids in the material.
19. Mark Auslander has speculated that Arthur Middleton, Ruth Middleton’s husband, may have been descended from enslaved people at Middleton Place through his father’s line (Flander Middleton). Auslander traces this genealogy in his article “Slavery’s Traces,” note 18.
20. Miles, email exchange with Tracey Todd, Mary Edna Sullivan, and Jeff Neale, September 2018. Miles, interview with Mary Edna Sullivan, November 13, 2018, Middleton Place. Grandeur Preserved and catalog text draft for Grandeur Preserved, 2011, given to Tiya Miles by Mary Edna Sullivan, March 29, 2017.
21. On May 29, 2009, NMAAHC staffers visited Charleston as part of their search for objects for the new museum’s collections. At the invitation of the Smithsonian, Middleton Place staff members attended and brought the sack with them, at Mary Edna Sullivan’s suggestion. Miles, email exchange with Mary Edna Sullivan, November 22, 2020. Auslander, “Slavery’s Traces.” Miles, email exchange with Tracey Todd, Mary Edna Sullivan, and Jeff Neale, September 2018. The legal owner of Ashley’s sack is the Middleton Place Foundation, a nonprofit organization.
22. Miles, interview with Mary Edna Sullivan, November 13, 2018, Middleton Place.
23. Stephen Berry sent me these thoughts via email after I visited the University of Georgia at his invitation to give the Gregory Lecture for the history department. In that talk I described the sack as sharing qualities in common with the as-told-to slave narrative form. Stephen Berry’s note expanded that idea, stressing the way in which slave narratives encourage the reader’s identification with the writer’s subjective experience, and concluding with the sentence quoted here. Stephen Berry to Tiya Miles, email exchange, October 25, 2019.
24. I am borrowing this language of purity from a concept expressed by Elizabeth Keckley. Keckley, Behind the Scenes, or Thirty Years a Slave and Four Years in the White House (1868; repr., New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), xv. Marla Miller discusses the associations of sweetness and comfort often made with women’s needlework from previous eras. Miller, Needle’s Eye, 3.
25. Daina Ramey Berry, The Price for Their Pound of Flesh: The Value of the Enslaved, from Womb to Grave, in the Building of a Nation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2017), 128.
26. Quilter and quilt historian Kyra Hicks uncovered a short transcribed text in which Powers describes having made four distinctive quilts. Kyra E. Hicks, This I Accomplish: Harriet Powers’ Bible Quilt and Other Pieces (N.p.: Black Threads, 2009), 38–40. Collector Jennie Smith is quoted here describing the transfer of what curators refer to as Powers’
s Bible quilt. Smith first saw Powers’s Bible quilt on display at the Northeast Georgia Fair in 1886. Later, she tracked Powers down in an attempt to purchase it. Jennie Smith, handwritten essay, c. 1891, Textile Department, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, Washington, D.C., quoted in Hicks, This I Accomplish, 28. Hicks, This I Accomplish, 27. Smith’s quote about buying the quilt is also reproduced in Gladys-Marie Fry, Stitched from the Soul: Slave Quilts from the Antebellum South (1990; repr., Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2002), 86. I am grateful to textile curator Jennifer Swope for spending two engrossing hours with me in a private showing of Powers’s Pictorial quilt, owned by the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
27. Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, “ ‘A Quilt Unlike Any Other’: Rediscovering the Work of Harriet Powers,” in Writing Women’s History: A Tribute to Anne Firor Scott, Elizabeth Anne Payne, ed. (Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2011), 86–90, 105. I first read the unpublished version of this paper in the Harriet Powers object files, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Fry, Stitched, 84–91. Marie Jeanne Adams, “The Harriet Powers Pictorial Quilts,” Black Art 3, no. 4 (1979): 12–28. For further analysis of Harriet Powers’s quilt in relation to the sack and slavery studies, see Tiya Miles, “Packed Sacks and Pieced Quilts: Sampling Slavery’s Vast Materials,” Winterthur Portfolio 54, no. 4 (Winter 2020).
28. Williams, Help Me to Find My People, 197.
29. I am borrowing and slightly adjusting the language of Sue Monk Kidd, who writes of an enslaved story quilter, Handful’s mother, Mauma: “She would tell it in the cloth.” Sue Monk Kidd, The Invention of Wings (New York: Penguin Books, 2014), 282.
30. Angelina E. Grimké, Appeal to the Christian Women of the South, 1836, in The Public Years of Sarah and Angelina Grimké: Selected Writings 1835–1839, ed. Larry Ceplair (New York: Columbia University Press, 1989), 53.