The Union Quilters, page 1
Table of Contents
Title Page
Copyright Page
Dedication
Acknowledgements
Chapter One - 1861
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Epilogue
ALSO BY JENNIFER CHIAVERINI
The Aloha Quilt
The Lost Quilter
The Quilter’s Kitchen
The Winding Ways Quilt
The New Year’s Quilt
The Quilter’s Homecoming
Circle of Quilters
The Christmas Quilt
The Sugar Camp Quilt
The Master Quilter
The Quilter’s Legacy
The Runaway Quilt
The Cross-Country Quilters
Round Robin
The Quilter’s Apprentice
◆ Elm Creek Quilts ◆
Quilt Projects Inspired by the Elm Creek Quilts Novels
◆ Return to Elm Creek ◆
More Quilt Projects Inspired by the Elm Creek Quilts Novels
◆ More Elm Creek Quilts ◆
Inspired by the Elm Creek Quilts Novels
◆ Sylvia’s Bridal Sampler from Elm Creek Quilts ◆
The True Story Behind the Quilt
DUTTON
Published by Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
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Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: 80 Strand, London WC2R 0RL, England
Published by Dutton, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.
First printing, February 2011
Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Chiaverini
All rights reserved
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Chiaverini, Jennifer.
The Union quilters : an Elm Creek quilts novel / Jennifer Chiaverini.
p. cm.
eISBN : 978-1-101-47585-0
1. Quiltmakers—Fiction. 2. Quilting—Fiction. 3. Pennsylvania—History—Civil War,
1861-1865—Fiction. 4. City and town life—Pennsylvania—History—19th century—
Fiction. 5. Domestic fiction. I. Title.
PS3553.H473U65 2010
813’.54—dc22 2010037238
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’ s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.
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To Jody Ewing, in gratitude
Acknowledgments
I am deeply grateful to Denise Roy, Maria Massie, and everyone at Dutton for their contributions to The Union Quilters and the Elm Creek Quilts series.
I am indebted to the Wisconsin Historical Society and their librarians and staff for providing excellent research resources for this book, and to Dr. Paul A. Cimbala of Fordham University for his insightful responses to my questions about African American soldiers and the United States Veterans Reserve Corps.
Many thanks to Geraldine Neidenbach, Heather Neidenbach, Marty Chiaverini, and Brian Grover, whose careful readings and thoughtful questions offered essential help throughout the writing of this book, and to Nic Neidenbach, who never failed to assist me with computer problems at crucial moments. Thanks also to my teammates from Just For Kicks, Ignition, and Oh-Thirty—especially Marty Gustafson, Laura Wolf, and Jean Mescher—for offering camaraderie, friendship, stress relief, encouragement, insomnia remedies, and the occasional bag of homegrown tomatoes. My sons, Nicholas and Michael, enrich my life with laughter, joy, and love every day, and I am forever thankful.
Finally, the following works proved invaluable during my research : Samuel P. Bates, History of the Pennsylvania Volunteers, 1861-5; Prepared in Compliance with Acts of the Legislature. Volumes II and X (Harrisburg, PA: B. Singerly, 1871); William Blair and William Pencak, eds., Making and Remaking Pennsylvania’s Civil War (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2001); F. F. Cavada, Libby Life: Experiences of a Prisoner of War in Richmond, Va., 1863-64, by Lieut.-Colonel F. F. Cavada, U. S. V. (Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1865); Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, eds., An Uncommon Time: The Civil War and the Northern Home Front (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002); Paul A. Cimbala and Randall M. Miller, eds., Union Soldiers and the Northern Home Front: Wartime Experiences, Postwar Adjustments (New York: Fordham University Press, 2002); Michael A. Dreese, The Hospital on Seminary Ridge at the Battle of Gettysburg (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2005); J. Franklin Dyer, The Journal of a Civil War Surgeon (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 2003); Tom Huntington, Pennsylvania Civil War Trails: The Guide to Battle Sites, Monuments, Museums and Towns (Mechanicsburg, PA: Stackpole Books, 2007); Diane Ragan, Grand Army of the Republic Department of Pennsylvania. Personal War Sketches of the African American Members of Col. Robert G. Shaw Post No. 206 (Pittsburgh, PA: Western Pennsylvania Genealogical Society, 2003); John F. Schmutz, The Battle of the Crater: A Complete History (Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, 2009); Keith Wilson, ed., Honor in Command: Lt. Freeman S. Bowley’s Civil War Service in the 30th United States Colored Infantry (Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2006). Jinny Beyer’s outstanding and comprehensive encyclopedia of pieced blocks, The Quilter’s Album of Patchwork Patterns (Elmhurst, IL: Breckling Press, 2009) inspired several of the designs used in Melanie Marder Parks’s beautiful endpapers, and I believe no quilter’s library is complete without it.
“In this extraordinary war, extraordinary developments have manifested themselves, such as have not been seen in former wars; and amongst these manifestations nothing has been more remarkable than these fairs for relief of suffering soldiers and their families. And the chief agents in these fairs are the women of America.
“I am not accustomed to the use of language of eulogy; I have never studied the art of paying compliments to women; but I must say, that if all that has been said by orators and poets since the creation of the world in the praise of women were applied to the women of America, it would not do them justice for their conduct during this war. I will close by saying
God Bless the women of America.”
President Abraham Lincoln
Remarks at the closing of the U.S. Sanitary Commission Fair
Washington, D.C., March 18, 1864
Chapter One
1861
Dorothea tied up the sack of salt pork and hard bread—enough for a week if Thomas didn’t find some poor soul in greater need to share with—and pressed the back of her hand to her forehead, taking a deep breath, fighting to still the whirl of thoughts. She knew she had forgotten something, something essential, something her husband would suffer without on the long marches through hostile lands, on the cold, lonely nights away from home. If she remembered what it was after he left the Elm Creek Valley, after he crossed the pass through Dutch Mountain with the other brave and patriotic men who had decided to answer Mr. Lincoln’s call to arms, it would do him no good whatsoever. Though he was the love of her life and her most cherished friend, she could not follow him into war.
From behind her came the sound of a muffled sob, and Mrs. Hennessey emerged from the pantry, wiping her eyes with the corner of her apron. At the sight of the housekeeperʹs tears, Dorothea pressed her lips together and inhaled sharply, briskly tightening the knot on the sack of provisions. She would not weep; she must not weep. Thomas had asked her for only that as he held her after they had made love the night before, that she not mourn him until he was truly gone. “I have every intention of returning to you,” he had said, kissing her cheeks, her lips, her forehead, brushing her long brown locks gently off her face. “You must believe it too. Your hopes will sustain us both.” In the semidarkness she had nodded, not trusting herself to speak. Thomas was not a superstitious man; he knew very well that men died in war, and the prayerful wishes of a devoted wife would offer him no protection from a Rebel minié ball. But neither would worry, and with baby Abigail to care for and many friends and neighbors looking to her in their worry and distress, she must choose confidence, hope, and determination. She could not, on the eve of his departure, distract Thomas with worries that she could not manage without him.
Mrs. Hennessey did not need to disguise her true feelings. “A man like Mr. Nelson’s got no business marching off to war,” she said, her ruddy cheeks flushed with indignation, frenzied strands of curly gray-streaked auburn hair escaping the bun at the nape of her neck. A longtime employee of Thomas’s parents, she had cared for Thomas since he was a boy in Philadelphia and had accompanied him when he came to Water’s Ford to take over Two Bears Farm and run the town primary school twelve years before. “A man like him ought to be in Washington City running things, not risking his life scrapping with the rabble. Don’t he have a farm to look after, and his book to write, and a family that needs his protection?”
“All the other soldiers have families and livelihoods too,” Dorothea pointed out, as she had the first dozen times the proud and protective housekeeper had expressed that opinion. “They can’t all stay home. Nor could Mr. Nelson both advise the president on matters of state and look after things around here.”
Mrs. Hennessey dismissed that with a wave of her hand, as if to say a smart man like Thomas Nelson could figure a way around the impossibility of being in two places at once. “All I know is, you don’t want him to go any more than I do, and he wouldn’t, if only you’d tell him about your condition.”
Dorothea nearly dropped the bundle of food she had packed so carefully. “How did you—” But of course. Every Tuesday, Mrs. Hennessey did the washing. She would know that Dorothea was late. “You must not tell him. Promise me. It’s much too early.”
“Of course I won’t breathe a word. It’s not my place.” Mrs. Hennessy gave her apron a vigorous tug, then hesitated, brushing off imaginary crumbs. “But if telling him would change his mind—”
“He might go anyway.” Thomas believed the Union cause was just and noble, and he was not a man to sit safely at home while other men risked their lives for principles he held sacred. “Would you have him go into battle worried and distracted?”
“I wouldn’t have him go at all, and neither would you.” Mrs. Hennessey regarded her sharply, her blue eyes red and puffy from tears. “You and your parents, and all them folk from Drowned Farm—”
“Thrift Farm,” Dorothea amended mildly, out of habit. As a child, she had lived with her parents and brother in a community of Transcendentalist Christians who had been enlightened ethicists and philosophers but poor farmers. Though the farm had been lost to a flood years before, obliging Dorothea’s family to move in with her cantankerous uncle Jacob, even newcomers to the Elm Creek Valley, like Mrs. Hennessey, considered it a fine subject for jokes.
“Pacifists, each and every one of you,” Mrs. Hennessey declared. “Pacifists and abolitionists. You might as well be Quakers.”
“Might as well,” Dorothea agreed, setting the bundle of food beside the rest of the gear Thomas had left near the front door, wishing she could remember what she had forgotten to pack for his long and dangerous journey away from Two Bears Farm.
She found her husband in Abigail’s room, standing silently beside her crib, stroking her soft, downy hair with a touch as light as a feather. She watched him from the doorway, his slim, wiry frame as familiar to her as her own limbs, his sandy hair boyishly thick, his beard neatly trimmed, bearing only a few threads of gray. His round spectacles caught a narrow shaft of sunlight that slipped between the drawn curtains. Blinking back tears, Dorothea came up behind him, wrapped her arms around his waist, and pressed her cheek to his back between his shoulder blades.
“I’m tempted to wake her,” he murmured, clasping Dorothea’s arms with one hand, resting the other upon Abigail’s head, as pretty and fine as a porcelain doll’s. “To say a proper good-bye, to hear her laugh one last time—”
“It won’t be the last time you hear her laugh.”
“I know, but my little baby will be gone by the time I return. She’ll be walking, talking, a proper little girl rather than a babe in arms.”
Dorothea almost blurted out her precious secret, but she had lost a baby early once before, and she was thirty-one, rather mature to be carrying only her second child. She could not stuff one last heavy burden of worry into his pack just before he set out. “The sooner you win this war for Mr. Lincoln,” she said instead, “the younger she’ll be when you come home.”
“I’ll get right to it, then.”
Dorothea tightened her embrace. “There’s no hurry.”
He laughed softly, amused by her quick contradiction. “We can’t miss the festivities. You and your friends worked too hard to make sure we had a rousing send-off.”
“It was mostly Gerda’s doing,” said Dorothea. “Anneke too.” Anneke Bergstrom was one of Dorothea’s few friends with cause to celebrate that morning. Her husband, Hans, had no plans to enlist, and since he had never become a naturalized citizen after immigrating to the United States from Germany, he could not be drafted if the state failed to meet its recruitment quotas with volunteers. Gerda Bergstrom’s emotions, however, were surely conflicted. Though she was likely relieved that her brother would be safe, she was thoroughly and irrevocably in love with Dorothea’s brother, Jonathan, who intended to enlist as a regimental surgeon. The grand farewell in front of the courthouse in Waterʹs Ford was intended to rally the men’s spirits before they set off for Harrisburg to enlist, but perhaps it would also serve to stoke the women’s courage. Preparations for the men’s departure had occupied their time and thoughts for two weeks, but after the last notes of fife and drum faded and the banners and bunting were taken down and put away, many long, lonely, empty days would stretch ahead of those left behind.
“My modest beloved,” said Thomas dryly, turning to embrace her. “Always giving the credit to others.”
“The rally was Gerda’s idea.”
“Yes, but you organized the ladies of the town, assigned tasks according to their abilities, kept everyone on schedule, and negotiated more than one truce between squabbling parties. I think Mrs. Hennessy perhaps chose the wrong Nelson to send to Washington City.”
Dorothea smiled, wistfully, at the often-discussed suggestion, wishing once again that Thomas could go to Washington rather than to war. “I organized the ladies of my sewing circle,” she acknowledged. “They organized their own neighbors and sisters and friends. I didn’t do everything on my own.”
“The ladies of this town would accomplish little outside their own homes without you to lead them.” Thomas laced his fingers through hers and kissed the back of her hand. She loved his hands, their strength and tenderness, the farmerʹs calloused palms and the scholar’s ink-stained fingertips. “You have a gift, my dear. Use it well. With their men gone, many of your friends will be at loose ends. You could encourage them, help them to be industrious—”
“Yes, I certainly will,” she choked out, fighting back tears, forcing a smile. “I’ll be as stern a taskmistress as I was once a teacher. I won’t allow any of my friends a single idle moment to waste in worry. When you men return, you’ll see how well we women managed in your absence, free at last of the yoke of male dominion.”
His eyebrows rose. “You make me afraid to leave you.”
“You may not recognize our town when you return, so marvelously will we transform it in your absence into a feminine utopia. When the war is over and you tally our accomplishments, you will no longer deny us the vote.”
“You know very well that I could deny you nothing.”
