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| Detail of the overshot coverlet |
The Georgia Museum of Art recently received as a proposed gift an overshot coverlet, woven out of wool and cotton and dyed with indigo
and madder. Like all overshot coverlets, it has a simple geometric pattern. The
red, white and blue yarns as well as the striped pattern suggest both the
American and the Confederate flags. It was woven in three separate pieces on a
four-harness loom, and then the pieces were sewn together. From the style and
the genealogical information provided by the donors, direct descendants of the
original weaver, we can confidently say that this coverlet dates from the
middle decades of the 19th century.
Eleanor Nut McCain is identified by a piece of cloth sewn
onto the coverlet as its original maker. Genealogical information provided by
her family tells us that she was born on May 2, 1818, in Mecklenburg County,
North Carolina, and died on July 25, 1899, in Gadsden, Alabama. The descendants
who inherited this coverlet remained in Etowah County, Alabama (the location of
Gadsden), until the second half of the 20th century.
It is unknown if Eleanor’s descendants are correct about her
being the weaver of this coverlet, as most coverlets were made by professional
male weavers who traveled from town to town, taking commissions from individual
families. It could be that Eleanor merely commissioned the coverlet, and her
descendants, upon inheriting “Grandma Eleanor’s handwoven coverlet,” assumed
that she was the one who wove it. Several factors, however, speak strongly in
the favor of Eleanor being the weaver. The simple geometric style of the
coverlet tells us that it was woven on a four-harness loom, without the
fashionable Jacquard attachment that was invented in 1820, as opposed to the
kind of loom owned by a professional weaver. We also know that many southern
women took up spinning and weaving during the days of the Civil War, as the
blockades limited the amount of new fabric that could be imported. Homespun
became a patriotic statement.
It would make sense if Eleanor McCain wove this coverlet at
that time, as she would have likely been unable to purchase a new coverlet in
the bellum atmosphere of scarcity. The colors of the coverlet are also the
colors of the Confederate flag, which raises the possibility of the coverlet
being made as an explicitly patriotic gesture. Dale Couch, the museum’s curator
of decorative arts, points out that it could have expressed either Confederate
sympathies or covert Union sympathies. Support for the Confederate cause was
not universal, and some counties, Couch says, tried to secede from Alabama (as
Jones County attempted in Mississippi).
It would only be natural for her children and grandchildren
to treasure, pass down, and publicly exhibit this coverlet, which in their time
was unfashionable, if their grandmother made it as a gesture of
self-sufficiency and patriotism.
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