SO, today's post is about the little excursion my mom and I took up to Lucan to visit The Lucan Area Heritage and Donnelly Museum. It's been there for a few years, and it's rather tiny (as are most of the small town museums around here. Ontario is filled largely of small towns, most of which are touristy and they're either open only in the summer, or only in the winter depending on what they do. Very few have much open all year round.) They expanded last year(?) I think, and now own another building which they use to house exhibits and they have the replica Donnelly cabin and barn. The reason we went was not to see the Donnelly cabin and barn though. We went to see the quilt exhibit - “Threads of Freedom: Quilts and the Underground Railroad – Fact or Fiction?”
First off, I want to say the exhibit was very interesting, and I do reccomend people interested in quilts go. Admission is by donation only, so it really doesn't need to break the bank. Of course now that I say that I remember most of the people that read this don't live in the same country... hahaha oops. Well, if you ever visit, the quilts that were involved with slaves will still be in the province at another museum... Now you're probably wondering what I was getting at so here we go. The exhibit is titled "Threads fo Freedom: Quilts and the Underground Railroad - Fact or Fiction?" and the description on the website is "This exhibit explores quilts as art forms, functional art, as history and their significance to the Underground Railroad." These would probably go together better if I'd read all the little fact file question things on the walls, but I was rather distracted by the amazing quilts and taking pictures of them. A lot of the info prominently displayed without having to lift the little file thing was mainly about how fabric was made back in the 1700 and 1800s. I did find it odd however that they only verbally told you which quilts would have been used to give messages to slaves, and had nothing obviously visible beside quilts (that wasn't a lifty file fact thing.) The reason I was surprised was because then I think you end up with what we saw while we were looking - two women and a young boy come in, put their donation in the bin, hear the little blurb about the 5 quilts associated with slaves, do a quick turn around, then headed out the back door to look at the cabin. And they weren't in the cabin when we left, so I hope they didn't consider it a waste of their time.
Second thing I want to say, and this will be shorter, is a small blurb about the Donnellys. Mainly I'll give you a link and you can explore them on your own, this post isn't about them. The Donnellys were a family from Ireland that were murdered on Feb 4th, 1880. 5 of 7 were killed. It was vicious and nasty and no one was ever convicted of the crime even though pretty much everyone knew who did it. Links are HERE and Wiki link HERE.
When I first heard about this exhibit I wondered what Lucan had to do with the Underground Railroad (for those who don't know what the Underground Railroad is, look HERE) because looking at the demographics of the local area it was all very much Irish, Scottish, English, and some Dutch. There were almost no other ethnicities. This is changing though (which I think is good as the high school I went to was NOT very tolerant of anything considered different.) I knew the Chatham area was involved in it - but then they openly advertise Uncle Tom's Cabin and they're closer to the border with the U.S.. After some looking, I learned that Lucan was originally called Wilberforce and had been originally settled by freed slaves from the United States in 1830. Mainly of the freeds slaves left though.) The exhibit shows a couple quilts given to Rev. William King by former slaves, 3 quilts whose patterns would have been used to signal, and a large number of quilts from the mid 1800s to present day. Now, since showing all the photos would be horribly long, I shall link part of the descriptsions to photos I took.
The first couple blankets were woven in the area back in the 1800s and were for sale. I almost had a heartattack learning they were only asking $175 for them. So, I will mostly focus on the quilts connected to slaves, even though the others were gorgeous. The two quilts made by slaves were exquisite. A lot of the female slaves learned how to quilt so they could avoid being out picking cotton. One thing I really liked about the first quilt made by a former slave was the designs quilted into them. Pineapples, lemon designs and flowers...or something. The quilt was handmade circa 1850. It was given to Rev. William King (1812-1895), founder of the Elgin Settlement for Black refugees near Chatham, ON. The quilt is on loan to the Lucan museum from the Buxton National Historic Site & Museum. I'm not sure what the block pattern is. The second quilt was a stunning log cabin quilt was made of silks and velvets - something I really haven't seen before. It was also given to Rev. William King and was made by former slaves, circa 1865-95, and is also on loan from the Buxton National Historic Site & Museum.
The next three quilts I will talk about are the code quilts. Now, there is speculation about the validity of the claims of the fact quilts were used as code - mainly because there are no written records. Of course, when you think about it, why would you keep written records of it? That would have been like people hiding Jews keeping records and having the Nazis find them. Some of you may be shocked that I make that association, or laugh at it, but it's rather true considering even in free states you could be punished for helping slaves etc. They also argue this isn't overly likely because part of these patterns did not exist in those times. Anyways, the first of these quilts that I will talk about is the bowtie pattern. The bowtie quilt was used to tell escaped slaves that they were welcome at this house and that they should/would be able to clean themselves up.
The next quilt is the Flying Geese pattern. This quilt was hung out to show slaves which way to go.
The last quilt dealing with slaves was the Drunken Sailor, and this quilt was used to tell slaves they would have a hard journey ahead of them.
The next special purpose quilts I'll talk about are the signature quilts. These are usually used for fundraising - you pay a fee and then they quilt your signature onto the quilt. The quilts I think were either then kept by the organization that made them to raise money, or they were possibly raffled off (though I can't see this being done in modern days with all the fraud and what not lol.) The Lucan museum had 4 signature quilts dating from a Red Cross quilt in 1918, most likely to raise money for the war, to newer quilts.HERE is the red cross quilt and one of the others. My mom had fun looking at all the embroidery on this bottom quilt and going "The points don't line up." (We're perfectionists. My mother once ripped out quilt blocks over and over and over until she was VERY angry just to get the points to match up.) The points, by the way, line up from a distance, but they're noticably off when you get closer. The other special quilt I was going to talk about was a Canadian Centennial quilt. This one is special because the coat of arms for each province is not pieced together like a quilt block. This prompted my mother to ask questions. Can you order them like that? Are they iron ons? Did they cut the coat of arms off of flags? Are they painted on like the other quilt on the other side of the room? The answer from both museum ladies was a polite "I don't really know..." So, closer inspection was needed. Getting under the area the quilt was hanging over I looked at it and I noticed little shade lines. The entire thing has been drawn/traced BY HAND and coloured with some sort of marker.So, if anyone local reads this and wants to go - I suggest you do. Admission, once again, is by donation only and the donation gets you the quilt exhibit and the replica cabin and barn. The museum is located at 171 Main Street Lucan, and it has big letters on it that say what it is, and it's the last building in a stretch before a little grassy area and a parking lot. There are lots of nice quilts, they covered the balcony railings with quilts to make the area more appealing and the designs range from fans to stars to tumbling blocks to 9 patches, and many others.
