Mollie and Kendall

I think, after much sophisticated detective work, that I have finally identified the problem at the heart of my high-tech organizational system...

The updates have been missing in action lately while I worked through a little cardiac scare. One night in the hospital and a number of tests later, I am happy to report that it was, in fact, just a scare. We are chalking this one up to 2011 stress. My plan is to deal with it by acting like a cat and falling asleep on my piles of to-do lists. You never see a cat having to take a stress test, do you?

2012 is mostly behaving better than 2011 so far. The weather has been eerily warm until today, we seem to be on schedule at the museum, and several quilting projects are back on the front burner. There may even be a better camera on the horizon.

The ancestors have been quiet the past few days, but, now that they know that their antics are not in fact endangering my heart, they are back in force again. Today the theme seems to be war casualties on the home front.

14 Jan 1876: Mary "Mollie" Savage Honnoll dies in Prentiss, Mississippi, at the age of 67. Mollie was the mother of Nancy and the wife of Peter the beekeeper. She was born in Cumberland, Kentucky, in 1818, married in Hardeman County, Tennessee, in 1836, and was in Mississippi by 1850. Her parents were Hamilton Savage and Elizabeth Martin. Mollie had 9 children. One son, William Cacy Honnoll, died in the Civil War at the Battle of Richmond. His older brother, James Wiseman Honnoll, brought his brother's body home. I cannot imagine the ways in which this war tore everything and everyone apart. Mollie's picture, taken toward the end of her life, looks as if it were all too much. I am certain that the skills that went into the quilt came from her.

Peter Ambrose Honnoll Jr. and Mollie Savage Honnoll, posted at the old Honnoll-Hunnell family site. 

Picture posted by Mona Mills at Find a Grave. 

Gravestone picture posted by Peggy Herridge Wilson at Find a Grave. 

Mollie is buried at Gilmore Chapel Cemetery along with William Cacy and  a tiny grandchild, Jimmie Honnoll Walker, my great-grandmother's next-youngest sibling. Peter remarried and died some years later. If his grave is at Gilmore Chapel, it is unmarked. Apparently he was a tough old reprobate who did not believe in churches. His son Moses Wiseman Honnoll more than made up for his father's apostasy by becoming a Methodist circuit preacher. My great-grandmother and her family must have left Mississippi soon after Mollie's death.

16 Jan 1815: Kendall Savage dies in New Orleans. The location and the timing makes me think that he was a casualty of the Battle of New Orleans, as he was from North Carolina and had no other connection with Louisiana, nor any sign that his family ever lived there. Kendall would have been Mollie's uncle, brother of her father Hamilton Savage, gone before she was born. There is no record of his burial place.

Today is a day celebrating peaceful change to make the world a better place, one neighborhood at a time, in celebration of the life of Martin Luther King. We remember what the price of peace is, but hope for a time when war is no longer necessary.

The 130-year-old quilt

Women's History Month challenge for March 8 — Did one of your female ancestors leave a diary, journal, or collection of letters? Share an entry or excerpt.

Quilt made by Nancy Ellinor Honnoll Walker and Mary Marcella Walker Brooks in Mississippi, 1881.

Do I ever wish that they had. I have so many questions now. But maybe this will serve in the place of a journal. Sometimes we get messages from the older girls in forms other than writing. Sometimes. This is one of those times. This story is about an heirloom that is also a record.

I posted about this quilt last year. Here's the rest of the story.

After my grandmother died in 1994, Shirley called me to say that there was something special for each of the grandchildren, something Grandmother particularly wanted us to have. With a slight catch in her voice, Shirley said that Grandmother wanted me to have THE quilt.

"What THE quilt?" I wanted to know. "There are lots of quilts she gave us."

"No," Shirley said, "THE quilt. I didn't even know about it until she told me."

Grandmother had rescued the quilt after a devastating tornado struck her family farm in 1957, destroyed the farmhouse and fatally injured Mossie. She also rescued pages from the family Bible that were scattered in the mud. The quilt was cleaned and put up away from everyone for the rest of Grandmother's life.

It is a slightly tattered beauty with the name "Mossie" and the date 1881 embroidered in one of its panels, and the name alone embroidered in another. We assumed that this was made for Mossie by her mother.

In 2003, I started researching it so that we could get it on the Quilt Index. There aren't that many quilts with such a clear and provable date and place of origin, after all. At that time I knew nothing about my great-grandmother's family except that her mother was a shadowy figure named Gramma Walker. And that didn't get me very far in the genealogy.

With a little digging, I uncovered the Honnoll family, and Gramma Walker turned out to be Nancy Ellinor Honnoll Walker, whose name was spelled exactly that way in the pages of the family Bible that Grandmother rescued after the storm.

I also realized that Mossie was born in 1874. By 1881 she would have been old enough to start learning sewing and cooking. I can't prove it, but I am betting anything that this was her first project, with her mother's help where needed. I believe that her mother drew the name and date and that Mossie embroidered them, carefully. It's what my mother did for my first embroidery project. Needlework does run in the family.

Name and date block

Name block. Look at that handwriting.

Tornado damage on the back.

Certainly this quilt was of supreme importance to Mossie. In a life filled with some serious hard times and many cross-country moves, it was one thing she never lost.

She didn't write down much, ever, not even recipes, but this quilt is a record and a message in itself.

P.S. When Shirley came up to Delaware for our wedding, she asked me quietly if I still had the Mossie quilt, since she didn't see it anywhere. As casually as I could, I told her that it was put up somewhere. It was. It was put up hanging in the chapel for our wedding the next day. The look on her fact when she saw it there, brilliant and perfect for an October day, is one of the best memories I have in my whole life. It was the day before Mossie's birthday, which I did not realize. Sometimes everything comes together.

Notes from Minnesota: great blue heron rookery

Great blue heron in rookery tree, Minnesota

The Minnesota branch of the clan has sent in some amazing shots of a heron rookery in the Mississippi River near their place. Great blue herons are the majestic slow-flying birds seen across the country at any available body of water--streams, lakes, ponds, fish hatcheries, and the like. They stand four feet tall or so, with six-foot wingspans. It's startling at first to see them nest so high up. The altitude and the island site together make an excellent predator defense, along with the close grouping of nests.

Rookery island in Mississippi River

Rookery trees on island

Rookery trees

Great blue heron flying in with nesting material

Heron penthouse