The Fabric of Our Nation and the Five Grandmothers

My mother Mary Robb Ferris making the coverlet donation.

By Bob Ferris

My mother recently donated a linsey-woolsey coverlet to the Workingmen’s Institute in New Harmony, Indiana the town where her mother Edna Dora Robb was born.  Family legend holds that the home-spun linen and wool spread was worked on by five of Edna’s grandmothers.  Edna told my mother that she remembered there being a loom in her backyard as a child.

Edna Dora Robb sitting far left in front of Owen Home circa 1894.  The Owen family were the founders of New Harmony.

As my mother was going through the paperwork with the institute’s director my sister Caroline and I were madly hitting the internet with our i-Phones trying to see who those five women could have been.  It was really a game of proximity and timing. When could we place five of her female ancestors near New Harmony during a time when they could have reasonably collaborated on the creating of this protective covering?  Caroline and I finally settled on a likely time encompassing the 1860s to the 1880s and guessed that the weavers were: Mary Ann “Mollie” Chaffin Wilson (1832-1925), Sarah Ann “Sally” Stinnett Robb (1840-1897), Susannah Wolfe Chaffin (1801-1884), Minerva Jane Taylor Robb (1816-1901), and Nettie Ann Britton Stinnett (1820-1894).  In essence, the five grandmothers probably wove this amazing piece during a time of healing that followed a great national turmoil.

The raw materials like those on the left were used to create the product on the right.

As we drove back to my mother’s current home in Annapolis, I had a lot of time to think about these five women who combined processed flax and spun sheep shearings into a functional product that has lasted more than a century and a half.  It was impossible not to think in terms of metaphors and compare those times with these.

The grandmothers were not homogeneous as their ancestral roots came variously from Scotland, Ireland, England and France.  They carried too the diverse soils of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Vermont, Virginia, Pennsylvania, South Carolina, Kentucky and Indiana in their collective experiences on this continent.  Their antecedents were also varied in terms of station having variously trod palaces, pulpits or prisons as well as battle fields and ship decks including those of the Mayflower and other iconic vessels.  And they could look over their shoulders at past generations to see noblemen, generals, and private soldiers along with one grandmother that was hung as a witch.

Mollie Wilson.  

Nettie Ann Britton Stinnett

Much as they were different, just like the flax and wool, they were all pioneers and they were all tried-and-true Americans.  For example, each had rosters of relatives who fought in the American Revolution with others in the War of 1812 and one was the wife of a man who served in the War with Mexico.  In fact, most of the grannies had grandfathers who were at Valley Forge during that fateful winter and two of them could call an American president or two “Cousin” without stretching the limbs of their family trees too terribly much.

So we could leave this as a nice story about five women weaving a coverlet in Indiana and a pleasant visit to history, but I think it is more important for us now and in our present state to look at the simple elements of this story symbolically.  Because at its core this is a story of American patriots who suffered much to build this country taking diverse, raw materials and with intricate care and devotion making them into something beautiful and meaningful that would stand the test of time.  Hopefully the spirit of these five brave ladies working a backyard loom during a time of turmoil and healing will help inspire and guide us as we try to repair and rebuild what has been torn apart in this country over the past 18 months.