?? Frequently Asked Questions ?? ?? Frequently Asked Questions ??
Lurn Bout Wi (Gulla/Geechee for Learn About Us)
Where can I see your quilt exhibit?
Join us in Charleston, SC
at the Charleston City Market at the Artist Market May 20-22th, 2010!
(Where our family has sold over 80 years)
We are working to open the UGRR Secret Quilt Code Exhibit in Atlanta, GA June 1st - August 31st, 2010 Check back for updates!
West Virginia State University purchased Booker T. Washingtons boyhood home and church properties in Malden West Virginia near Charleston and we have a small UGRR Quilt Code exhibit there.
For more information contact Phone: 1-800-987-2112 or 
200 Erickson Alumni Center Institute, WV 25112
Phone: (304) 766-3130 Email: rakescm@wvstateu.edu
Numbers of people who could have used the UGRR Secret Quilt Code
When it comes to the divisions of land boundries Africa you must concider that division of the countries and land were not made by linguist groups, family ties or even by the African people themselves. Several new groups were formed from some that are all related or the same people and given new names by Europeans.
I have found the answer is hundreds of thousands in America over hundreds of years is the answer. There are records still in existance in French and Dutch languages showing how many came through Louisana and Mobile AL. The sea ports in SC, GA, VA were also frequently used due to the low country plantation demands and need for the knowledge of agricultural (rice, cotton, indigo) cultivation as well as carpentry, metal smithing skills of the west African tribes routinely performed in high heat and humidity.
The Igbo showed a natural immunity to the disease of maleria which routinely killed many other nationalities of forced laborers. It would present more like a cold lasting a week or two. Here is one of many of the links I will be adding in support of the numbers of imported Igbo peoples.
To read the entire review click on http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showpdf.php?id=13855
Vincent Carretta. Equiano the African: Biography of a Self-Made Man. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2005. xxviii + 436 pp. ISBN 978-0-8203-2571-2.
Reviewed by Douglas Chambers (Department of History, University of Southern Mississippi)
Published on H-Atlantic (November, 2007) "Almost an Englishman": Carretta's Equiano
Photos of one of the Strother houses on the National Register
along with slave inventories are being added now. Check back soon!
I have received a photo of my mother's grandfather Milton Strother
David Strother and thought you may like to see it.
Still Picture Records Section, Special Media Archives Services Division (NWCS-S), National Archives
As we get questions from our visitors, we will answer them here.
Question 1. Is about my mother, Serena Wilson's place of birth and who is her father Milton Strother Sr. born about 1853-60 or Milton Strother Jr. born 1882. Here is the detail of the question.
First, I'm afraid you have confused your grandfather and great-grandfather. According to census records, there were two Milton Strothers - father and son. They are the only people by that name in the Edgefield, South Carolina censuses.
The first, Milton Sr., whom you seem to think is your grandfather, is in fact your MOTHER's grandfather. He was born in 1859. In the 1880 census he is described as single and living on the Edgefield farm of Henry Barnes, apparently his stepfather. Henry's mother, Ann Barnes, is black; Milton is the only one of her children who is surnamed Strother and described in the census as mulatto. Since Milton would have been born while Ann was a slave, it is not impossible that his father was a white member of the Strother family, who were among the largest slaveholders in Edgefield. That would support your mother's claim that an ancestor (her great-grandfather, not her father or grandfather) was a white son of a plantation owner.
In 1934 when your mother was born, both Milton and his wife, Martha (Frazier?) Strother, would have been about 75 years old. More logically it is their son, Milton Jr., who is your mother's father.
Milton Jr. was born in 1882. In 1934 when your mother was born, Milton Jr. would have been a much more plausible 52. By his first marriage, Milton Jr. had a son, Fred, born around 1902; Fred's mother died sometime between 1910-30. In the 1930 census, Fred is living in Wiliamson, West Virginia, where you say your mother went to school, along with his wife and 4-year-old daughter, both of whom are,strangely, named Serena. The census notes that Fred (the only one by that name in West Virginia) and both Serenas were born in South Carolina, and moved to West Virginia in about 1928.
If you want, I can provide you with links to original census records documenting this. If you can demonstrate that I am wrong, I would appreciate seeing comparable evidence.
From LEIGH FELLNER of Harts Cottage Quilts 2004
Serena Strother - Wilson (her name is different on the birth certificate) was born in Edgefield, South Carolina to Milton Strother Sr. who was in his 70's by her birth date which was March 1933. Milton Sr.'s age is different in each of the US Census for 1880, 1910, 1920 US Census. Milton Sr. is her father, not by his son Milton Strother, Jr. who was also born in the late 1800's.
The mid-wife did not write her name as Serena on her birth certificate but her father and mother are listed. My mother did not know how her name was listed until she applied for a passport and sent for her birth certificate to go to Germany with my father, in 1957. She then had Serena added to her vital statistical information.
Her mother, Mary Eva Mc Daniel married Milton Sr. after the death of his first wife Martha Pixley Strother. Martha and Milton Strother were married in 1880. We know that my mother's other Grand father Peter Farrow Jr. married Mary Eva and Milton. (per Serena Wilson) In our family there were 4 Serena's one was Fred Strother's wife called "Big Serena", my mother's older sister called "Little Serena" the one you refer to in the Census data, and my mother who was called "Doll" all her life to distinguish them apart.
We know which Milton it was because she knew her father, lived with him and he participated in raising her. An interesting note seems to be that David Strother had a wife named Ann and Milton's mother is also named Ann (Barns)!
By the way we do have the census information also. We also have her, still living, her birth certificate, the midwifes statement along with two eye witnesses of her birth signed affidavits regarding the name mistake of the midwife.
Question: I would therefore appreciate your focusing on addressing the matter at hand - your mother's MOTHER's family. For example, please explain how Eliza, born in Benin "in the early 1800s", could have been the mother of Nora, who herself gave birth to your mother in 1934 and was alive in the 1950s.
Nora Bell Farrow is Mary Eva and Ozellla's mother (my Grand Mother's Mother) not my mother's mother. This information is also in the cencus.
Where could an escaping person find a quilt?
Everyone in the country hung their quilts outside. No one had washers or dryers.
Slave escapes done with the quilts were orchestrated by a conductor. An escaping person would not know the Secret Quilt Code (unless they were from a tribe that used that language, then he or she could read the language in the quilt.)
Every quilt with the same patterns used in the UGRR Secret Quilt Code were not all used to assist with slave escapes. Each UGRR quilt was unique. Many were maps that match the phyical terrain of the cities and states they went through. The shape of the quilt patterns were the same.
In our quilts, the distinct stitches, the dying, colors, construction were unique, and weaving techniques particular to African tribes. Also the colors of the patterns along with the arrangement of the symbols and patterns were and still are used in African languages or dialects.
There are some quilts that the conductor carried as maps and the grid of the map were in a pattern that formed the longitude and latitude of the map. Also the ties on the quilt were used as the longitude and latitude of the map that would show safe houses, bodies water, stations, places you should not go and plantations.
Other quilts were displayed outside as a prearranged signals to inform a freedom seeking group, traveling with a conductor, if it is "safe" to come to my home and the services I could provide. The services were usually Bow Tie/Sue Bonnet = clothes to dress up like the free Black, affluent society, Log Cabin = sheltar, Nine patch = food. The services would be rendered by their husbands, sons and the church they belonged to --- usually not just one person.
Question: Is this the only time in History that quilts were used a messages?
No. Jewish people used Quilts during the World War to let others know when Nazi presence made it dangerous to come and go.
Question: Were all people of color slaves? If so how did they fund escapes?
There were large numbers of free Black in all of the states in existance -- 1790's to late 1800's, my children were taught as if all Black people were slaves. Hope this table quickly sheds some light on the subject.
See Table 4 - Free Black Real Estate Ownership in Fourteen Cities in 1850.
Cities Value of Real Estate No. of Owners Avg. Value of Holding
New Orleans $2,354,640 650 $3,623
Philadelphia 327,000 71 $4,248
Cincinnati 317,780 118 $2,693
Charleston 200,000 47 $4,268
Brooklyn 145,785 98 $1,488
Baltimore 137,488 101 $1,361
New York 110,010 71 $1,549
Washington 108,816 178 $ 611
Louisville 95,650 63 $1,518
Pittsburgh 74,200 38 $1,953
Buffalo 57,610 41 $1,405
St. Louis 49,650 16 $3,103
Albany 44,400 32 $1,388
Boston 41,900 13 $3,223
Source Lenoard P. Curry The Free Black in Urban America 1800-1850. The Shadow of the Dream. The University of Chicago Press (Chicago, Ill. 1983) p.267.
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