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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3.0 out of 5 stars
A book that tantalizes,
By gi (Louisiana) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Pioneer Quiltmaker: Story of Dorinda Moody Slade (Paperback)
This book is tantalizing. I recommend it for the clues it can provide anyone interested in quilt history, women's history, and cultural and material history.
The author tells the story of Dorinda Moody Slade with great sympathy. Its pattern is typical of a segment of the Scots-Irish immigrants who came to America in the 18th and early 19th centuries, staking and farming land until it was depleted of its nutrients, and then moving further south or west and repeating that pattern. Born into a family that took care to see their children had an education, Dorinda moved with them to Georgia and Alabama and finally to Texas. She married another member of the general group, who died of "alcohol poisoning," leaving his young widow to provide for her two children by working as a domestic servant and by her needlework skills, which included lace making, quilting, and sewing. By that time, 1835, the family was in Texas. In time, Dorinda met yet another Scots-Irish immigrant, Michael Goheen. In consequence of his work in the Texas militia, he had been granted valuable land in what is now Houston, which the couple developed with the help of slaves. Thirteen years later, he died of one of the fevers that routinely swept across the border regions. In her grief, a 42-year-old Dorinda found solace in Mormonism and began to plan to migrate to Utah with other community members who had converted to the new faith. Facing the trip, she and a widower whose land lay near hers, married, a match that seems to have been happy. She spent the final 40 years of her life in Utah. As I read Davis' account of this woman's life, I kept looking for footnotes, wondering what source she had accessed in order to reach sundry conclusions and wanting to follow some of her statements that had important implications. Sadly, few were there. Thus, we cannot know the basis for the writer's reasoning and conclusions. This is a serious flaw in a book such as Davis projected. Dealing with the quilts and with a sampler, the author treats them as almost incidental objects, produced to console her or to feed her fertile imagination. She does not use the many tools of analysis available to her to account for their meaning. Nor does she consider the political and cultural contexts that, given the names and dates, almost surely are replete with meaning. Dorinda Slade's entire family converted from Methodism to Mormonism, for instance. In fact, it appears that many in the community made that shift. Why? What made them so ready to depart Texas, especially when all seemed to be thriving there? More to the point, however, are the many unanswered questions about the quilts and needlework produced. All exhibit refined needlework skills. Where did she acquire these skills? Moreover, even the early ones are ambitious projects and are executed in fabrics that appear to have purchased specifically for the quilts. Dorinda was educated at home by tutors and later sent away to school for a brief time, and education of young women seemed to be an important value in her family. Later, she would follow her parents' example with her own children, including sending them into the town of Houston to live with relatives so that they might have access to schools. Was the sampler she created an assignment in her own school? Does the school account for the sense of design and the preference for applique that mark her work? Did her parents' decision to move account for its unfinished condition? Where did she acquire the design sense and the sophisticated needle skills to conceive and execute the quilt shown on the cover, for instance? And what is the significance in her decision to substitute either pineapples or flowers for the "feathers" she had used when she had made the same pattern. Who named that earlier pattern--Dorinda or descendants? It is a pattern commonly associated with the Democratic Party after 1844, one called "Whig's Defeat." Where did she discover the pattern? In short, this is a book that cries aloud for a second look. What a service it would be if the author returned to her materials, armed with the research techniques that have been introduced to the study of quilts in the years following the publication of her book. There are important meanings in these quilts, and I hope Ms. Davis will consider revisiting her subject and locating them. Dorinda Moody Slade's eventful life itself needs contextualizing. How such remarkable needlework survived the journeys and hardships she experienced, why she preserved the early sampler when every inch of space was valuable in a successful overland journey, the place of the early whitework quilt---so many questions. Too few answers. I value the book for the questions it raises and for the photography. I recommend it as a story of determined optimism. I consider it a book that anyone studying southern quilts should own. Yet, those questions need to be answered.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Pioneer Quiltmaker: The Story of Dorinda Moody Slade,
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This review is from: Pioneer Quiltmaker: Story of Dorinda Moody Slade (Paperback)
Excellent book! She was my great, great, great grandmother and it was nice to see pictures of her and her family and read about their lives. An added plus is the quilt patterns of hers in the back of the book!!
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