By Matthew Monk, Linda Eaton Associate Curator of Textiles
As you near the end of the Almost Unknown, The Afric-American Picture Gallery exhibition, you’ll see a large, red, white, and blue striped quilt. The colors may capture your attention at first, but many of its details are only seen up close.
Priscilla (Ballenger) Leedom, a Quaker abolitionist and unionist, crafted the quilt in 1861 to protest the outbreak of the American Civil War. She wrote in her memoirs that Lewis Halbert, a free Black employee of her son, Dr. John Leedom, was the talented artist who drew the central motif for the quilt. In 1863, two years after drawing the eagle, he left Dr. Leedom’s employment to enlist in the Union Army.
Halbert’s drawing depicts an eagle clutching a leafy branch in its right talons and a bundle of arrows in its left. The eagle, projected on the wall beside the quilt in the Almost Unknown exhibition, reflects Halbert’s skills in intricate detail.
The quilt measures 81 inches high and 92 inches long. Its top was made from strips of plain weave red, white, and blue striped silk alternating with cream/gold-toned lighter-weight plain weave silk, finished with a gold silk fringe on three sides. It’s filled with thin cotton batting, and its backing is made of blue and white chambray. The center design features Lewis Halbert’s drawing joined with Priscilla Leedom’s sewing in an embroidered eagle worked in silk floss. The eagle’s body is sewn in white, while its eye and nostril are sewn in black and gold/brown. Halbert’s eagle is surrounded by Leedom’s quilted stars and ivy borders worked in white.
Halbert’s pencil design shows through in several areas under the embroidery, and the gray and blue chalk lines reveal Leedom’s quilting pattern. Interestingly, the needlework-quilted eagle acts as the thread that holds the entire textile together.
Priscilla Leedom’s father was an abolitionist who hid self-emancipated Black Americans in the family’s southern New Jersey home. Priscilla’s formal education in Philadelphia included attending various prestigious schools and studying drawing. The Ballenger and Leedom families employed Black domestic workers from the community of Free Black Americans who lived in Philadelphia. Priscilla Leedom spoke fondly of many of these family employees in her memoirs, and she and other women abolitionists created fancy goods, some depicting abolitionist motifs, to sell at anti-slavery fairs. The money they raised went to support the cause of abolition and those fighting to emancipate themselves and their families.
As you wend your way through the exhibition, be on the lookout for this remarkable quilt. Consider its meaning as marking a unique moment in history and how its story adds to the narrative of Almost Unknown, The Afric-American Picture Gallery.