I remember visiting New York City and experiencing its layered texture and gray color.  A huge number of people in a small space for centuries have left their patina of smoke and dust on every surface.  Handbills layered endlessly on every available wall made impromptu collages.  When I entered museums and galleries for the always main purpose of my visit, to see great art, I was struck by the number of 20th century pieces that reflected those surfaces outside.  They were obviously made in the city, which has long been an artists’ mecca.

Later, I took another trip to a museum in coastal Virginia to see works by the famous quilters of Gee’s Bend, Alabama.  The quilts were made mostly for home use, but they have become famous for their obvious roots in West African textile design, preserved by an isolated community of African slaves and passed on to their descendants.

The quilts were almost casually made, for practical reasons, but with roots in a distinctive type of design that the women of Gee’s Bend learned from their mothers and grandmothers and aunts.  They grew up with patchwork quilts that repeated geometric designs originally produced by narrow looms.  The quilts came from an organic process, not an academic tradition or formal instruction.  They came from an environment with fresh, bright colors, not automobile exhaust and building dust.

There was a quilt in the collection, however, made of material with a faded patina and rough surface, namely the work pants of a man who obviously did hard physical labor.  For me, it was the most impressive quilt in the collection, although I did love the vibrant colors and neater designs of the other quilts.  This quilt, by Lutisha Pettway, was rough, but it embodied history and emotion and spoke of the life of the family it came from.  The maker said that she made it when her husband passed away, so that she could wrap herself in his love.  She cut the pants legs apart and arranged the pieces so they formed a large rectangle.  The resulting design was simple and rhythmic.  The stained, worn, and faded denim had a surface interesting enough for any abstract expressionist, but this surface told a life story. 

Unlike the paintings in the Museum of Modern Art, this artwork didn’t compete for status and money, this artwork spoke sincerely of life and emotion.  It embodied the economic struggle of a family and their day-to-day labor, and a wife’s grief.

Pettway lacked academic training and credentials, however, her work’s emotional power was greater than that of any I saw in New York.  I know that statement would make most (maybe all) of my university art professors dismiss everything I have said.  Their prejudice kept them from seeing the art in the work of females, minorities, or anyone without a university degree.

I still love the museums.  So much beautiful and inspiring art is to be seen in them.  After all, it was museums and galleries where quilts were finally hung as works of art and treated with respect.

Copyright 2018 by Glenda Alexander.  All Rights Reserved.

See a variety of “work-clothes” quilts here:

http://www.soulsgrowndeep.org/quilt-categories/work-clothes

The following article was published in The Mt. Airy News on  August 15, 1912, on page 2.  The city journalist was obviously making fun of people who lived “out in the country.”  However, as a Johnson family historian, I recognized several names in this interesting piece of Surry County, N. C., history.

“Sheriff’s Afternoon Nap Disturbed

“There is a fellow out in the country who hardly realizes what a serious offense he committed last Sunday afternoon in the quiet precincts of this thriving city.  The story goes that as Sheriff Haynes was quietly dreaming of the days when he may sit in a seat in Congress or keep the books as Secretary of State for this commonwealth–while he snoozed in the cool shade of his home on the sultry afternoon a man hastily rode up and with one hand bandaged and numerous knife wounds in his Sunday coat told how he had been assaulted at the McBride school house three miles east of the city.

“He declared that while the Rev. Allen Johnson was declaring the ways of salvation on the day in question three men from the state of Virginia by name Straud Collins, Jim Collins, and Merady Pell came to the place of worship and having imbibed too freely of Virginia liquor they proceeded to disturb the preaching by talking out in meeting and using language that so disturbed the worshippers that the minister deemed it best to dismiss the congregation.

“This being done the three above named young men became even more boisterous and one used his knife on the unfortunate young man who brought the news to town.  The sheriff went to the scene of the conflict and of course found the birds had flown.  Warrants are out for the unfortunate men who were so unthoughtful as to go to church while drinking and violate the laws of the state thus getting themselves in splendid position to help make good roads for Rockingham [County] when Patrick [County, Va.] needs their services as farmers so badly.”

The people in this story:

Sheriff Caleb Hill Haynes did indeed have political aspirations, having run unsuccessfully for the North Carolina legislature in 1912.  He was elected to the House in 1920 and served until 1933.  He was married to a daughter of Chang Bunker, one of the original Siamese twins, who settled near Mt. Airy.

Rev. Allen Johnson was from the section of Surry County on the Virginia line and the border of Stokes County, within the Westfield township.  The McBride family cemetery and McBride road are located on that side of Mt. Airy.  Allen was a grandson of another preacher from that area, Rev. “Right” Johnson, and was a son of Henderson Johnson and Amelia Norman.

The three delinquents who disrupted the sermon have connections by marriage to the  Johnson family.  It is common in a small, rural community to find many people who are distant cousins across generations, as joked about in the song, “I’m My Own Grandpaw.”  In this case, most of the relationships seem to have involved  a woman named Lula Belle McBride, who came from a large family and had bad luck in her marriages.

Lula McBride was first married in 1929 to James Hemmings, the widower of Allen Johnson’s daughter, Mary.  Then in 1933, James Hemmings died.  Allen Johnson’s grand-daughter, Sarepta Johnson, had died young, back in 1915.  Her husband, Austin Holt, married the second time to Jettie Collins, sister of the above-named Straud and Jim Collins.  Poor Jettie died very soon after, and Austin married a third time, to Lula McBride Hemmings, in about 1936.

The three drunken Virginians were only about 18-20 years old in 1912.  The Collins boys grew up and married and went to work at the granite quarry in Mt. Airy, while Meredith Pell worked on the railroad.  Straud Collins and Meredith Pell both married sisters of Lula McBride.

To sum up, Rev. Johnson’s sermon was interupted by his grandson-in-law’s future brothers-in-law, and his son-in-law’s future brothers-in-law.  Straud Collins was both, first through his sister and then through his wife.  Lula McBride was the second wife of Allen Johnson’s widowed son-in-law, who was her first husband, and she was the third wife of his widowed grandson-in-law, who was her second husband.

You could write a song about this if you could keep it all straight.

Austin Holt died in 1958 and left Lula widowed for the second time.  She married a third time, to Rufus Samuel Gunnel, and was soon widowed again.  Lula McBride Gunnell passed away in 1984 and was buried in the McBride Cemetery.

The theory of six degrees of separation says that we live in a small world and that we can find a connection to any other human being on the planet by no more than six relationships.  In early twentieth century Westfield, all you needed was Lula Belle McBride.

Sources consulted:  Mt. Airy News, Moody’s Funeral Home Records, and  U. S. Census records, death certificates, marriage records, and cemetery records for Surry and Stokes Counties, N. C. and Patrick County, Va.