The Lost Quilter (37 page)

Sophia continued the astonishing tale. Alone at Port Royal with three young children in her care, amidst ten thousand other slaves abandoned by owners fleeing their barrier island plantations ahead of the Union advance, Joanna found work as a laundress and seamstress. Although those were her official roles, she served however she could be useful, sometimes as a nurse, as a cook, and often as a teacher, helping other newly freed slaves learn to read.

She served faithfully throughout the Civil War, and later, as
the head of her household, she was granted forty acres of land as part of the Port Royal Experiment, wherein property that had once belonged to the rebellious planters was divided up among the newly freed slaves. Joanna accepted forty acres of the Chesters’ abandoned plantation, Oak Grove, perhaps believing that her husband would think to look for her there.

He never came, but others did: Titus’s two nieces and a nephew; Sally, a cook from the Harpers’ Charleston home; and George, another house slave who had been instrumental in arranging Joanna’s escape. In 1868 Joanna and George married, and since Joanna refused to accept George’s surname—Harper, that of their former master—he changed his last name to North, which Joanna had assumed upon her escape.

Joanna had named the farm North’s Freedom, and as the years passed and the community grew, the possessive was dropped and the small town that sprung up became known as North Freedom. “Most people believe it refers to a direction,” Sophia said, shaking her head in amusement. “Or they believe it’s the northern part of a town called Freedom. That’s not the case at all. The town and the quilting circle that arose from it were named after Joanna. She lived out the rest of her years in North Freedom, and according to family stories, she both appreciated the blessings of her hard-won liberty and endured difficult times throughout Reconstruction, when the promises of slavery’s end failed to materialize. For most African-Americans in the South, the struggle for true freedom had only just begun.”

“Did Joanna ever leave North Freedom?” asked Sylvia. “Didn’t she ever travel north once she was free?”

“According to a family history her eldest daughter, Hannah, wrote, Joanna often spoke of traveling back to the Pennsylvania farm where she had once found refuge. But in the early years,
she felt compelled to remain on Edisto Island in case Titus came searching for her. Later, after Titus was gone and she remarried, she had two more children by George, not to mention so many other responsibilities that travel became impossible.” Sophia smiled ruefully. “Travel was also prohibitively expensive for a family that struggled to get by on very little. But Hannah’s family history offers another suggestion.”

“What’s that?” asked Justine.

Sophia hesitated, thinking, weighing her words. “It’s a cryptic passage, one I never could quite puzzle out. Hannah says that once, when an opportunity to travel north came her way, Joanna mulled over the opportunity for days before finally deciding to remain home. When Hannah asked her why, Joanna replied, ‘Everyone I knew from those days has gone on to make better lives for themselves. They probably wouldn’t thank me to come to them carrying tales from unhappy times. Sometimes the past is best left alone.’ Or at least that’s how Hannah remembered the conversation.”

“How sad,” said Sarah. “I would think her former protectors would have been thrilled to have heard from her, to know that she was alive and safe.”

“Perhaps they knew,” replied Sophia. “Joanna was reputedly a prolific letter writer. Perhaps Joanna had informed them of her safety and was only awaiting an invitation to return, an invitation that never came. We’ll probably never know.”

Sophia led them on through the gallery, pausing to study and admire individual quilts, each of which retained the traditional characteristics of the Freedom Quilters while also expressing each woman’s unique artistry. Gazing upon them, Sylvia could imagine the Joanna she had discovered in the pages of her great-great-aunt Gerda’s memoir persevering through unimaginable hardships, doggedly pursuing her freedom, and going on to teach
and share and inspire those around her. Could there have been two such courageous, amazing women in the world at the same point in history?

She knew the answer already: There had been hundreds, even thousands, of such remarkable women in every era, but their stories had gone untold or had been forgotten. It was up to current and future generations to preserve the fragments of women’s history that remained, to mend the frayed edges, to tell everyone who would listen about the strength in the warp and the beauty in the weft so that no one could dismiss their unsung contributions as mere scraps of faded fabric.

Even if she never confirmed that Joanna North was the brave runaway who had found shelter with her great-grandparents, even if she never discovered why that runaway had never returned for her son, even if Gerda’s long-lost quilter were never found, it was enough to know that such a woman had existed, that she had faced loss and hardship with courage and faith, and that she had remained undaunted. If one such woman or two or thousands had lived, it should give all women hope that they too could live as bravely,
would
live as bravely, whatever dangers or sorrows confronted them.

At last Sophia brought the tour to a stop before what appeared to be the oldest quilt in the collection. Though the pieces were worn and faded, the pattern had retained its striking boldness—a Courthouse Steps variation surrounded by an outer border of solid squares occasionally replaced by a Birds in the Air block. Beside her, Sylvia heard Sarah draw in a sharp breath of recognition and excitement.

“We’re certain that Joanna North herself made this quilt,” Sophia said proudly, pleased by Sarah’s reaction, though she could not possibly suspect its cause. “It’s the jewel of our collection.”

“How do you know Joanna made it?” asked Sarah, although she surely knew that Sophia’s conclusion was true.

Surely Sarah must have recognized the size of the Birds in the Air blocks, the blue-and-brown homespun fabric used in the large triangle in the lower right corner, the double pinks scattered here and there in the smaller triangles, the dark wools, the soft faded cottons. Sylvia had known them the moment she saw them, for she had seen those same prints and patterns in another quilt, studied them and wondered about them and the woman who had sewn the small pieces together for so long that they were engraved on her memory.

“Yes, how can you be sure?” Justine asked. “Did Joanna sign the quilt or embroider her initials?”

“She wrote about it in her journal,” Sophia explained. “One of the few extant complete passages describes how she enlarged a quilt that had turned out too small by attaching borders made from blocks left over from an earlier project. I only wish our collection boasted that first quilt, the quilt that influenced all the Quilts of North Freedom that followed, but I’m afraid that treasure has been lost to history.”

“Perhaps it’s not lost after all,” said Sylvia, beckoning Sarah to open the tote bag, to show Sophia the tattered Birds in the Air quilt that had set her upon a quest to discover what had happened to Gerda’s lost quilter, a quest that seemed, at last, to have reached its end.