Ashley's sack explained

Ashley's sack
Material:Cotton, thread
Size: × inches
75 × 40 cm
Created:1850s; embroidering added 1921
Discovered Place:Nashville, Tennessee
Location:Charleston, S.C.

Ashley's sack is a mid-1800s cloth sack featuring an embroidered text that recounts the slave sale of a nine-year-old girl named Ashley and the parting gift of the sack by her mother, Rose. Rose filled the sack with a dress, braid of her hair, pecans, and "my love always". The gift was likely passed down to Ashley's granddaughter, Ruth (Jones) Middleton, who embroidered their story on to the sack in 1921.[1] [2]

Ashley's sack was given to Middleton Place, in Dorchester County, South Carolina, one of the nation's preeminent slavery-era plantation sites. While still owned by Middleton Place, the sack was on long-term loan to the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington D.C. until 2021 when it returned to Middleton Place. According to Tracey Todd, vice president of the Middleton Place Foundation, the sack is a rare material artifact from a period in United States history when human slavery was legal. Todd stated: "The sack allows us to relate to the enslaved people and feel the same pain today — if you have lost a child or been separated from a parent — that Rose and Ashley felt ... Ashley's Sack is a portal to understanding more about our shared history."[3] [4]

History

Ashley's sack was purchased for $20 at a flea market in Nashville in the early 2000s. Alarmed by the embroidered story of a slave sale separating a mother and her daughter, the woman who purchased the sack did an Internet search for "slavery" and "Middleton" and then gifted the sack to Middleton Place.[5] On display from 2009 to 2013 at Middleton Place, the emotionally-charged artifact evoked human suffering and endurance. During this period, the identities of Rose, Ashley, and Ruth were unknown. It was viewed by thousands of museum visitors, including Central Washington University sociocultural anthropologist and museum-studies professor Mark Auslander, who has since traced the history of the sack to identify Ashley, her mother Rose, and the author of the needlepoint, Ruth.[5] [6] In the research article he published in 2016, Auslander uses census reports, wills, newspaper announcements of court decrees, and inventory records to reconstruct their history. The historical chains of remaining evidence suggest that Ashley and her mother Rose were owned by a wealthy Charleston merchant and planter, Robert Martin (c. 1790–1852), who was worth over $300,000 at his death in December 1852 . After his death, evidence suggests Ashley was sold away from her mother in order to raise money for his heirs.[7]

Auslander's archival work retraces the life of Ruth. He posits Ruth Middleton was born Ruth Jones in Columbia, South Carolina, around 1903. Her parents, Austin and Rosa Jones, were servants at the University of South Carolina. Ruth made her way to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and married Arthur Middleton, who was born around 1899 and also from South Carolina. However, Ruth and her husband are never listed as having lived together. She had a daughter, Dorothy Helen, born in Philadelphia in 1919. In 1921, when Ashley's sack was embroidered, Ruth would probably have been a single mother to a young daughter. Newspaper reports and census records suggest that throughout her life, Ruth worked in affluent households in Philadelphia. By 1928, she was well known in Philadelphia's African-American high society, gaining regular mention in the "Smart Set" and "High Society" pages of The Philadelphia Tribune, the leading African-American newspaper. Auslander writes that Ruth "host[ed] bridge and cocktail parties and [wore] elegant couture". Her daughter, Dorothy Helen, was also known for her fashion sense and authored several "Smart Set" columns.[8]

Ruth died in January 1942 of tuberculosis. Dorothy Helen died in 1988.[8]

Timeline

Professor Mark Auslander's research yields the following timeline (most dates are approximate).

Impact

Heather Andrea Williams describes the sack in the epilogue of her book Help Me to Find My People as a testimony to inter-generational loss and survival.[10] Professor Mark Auslander emphasizes the importance of the sack, and the historical reconstruction of the lives of Ashley, Rose, and Ruth, as a conduit to understanding the endurance of family lineal memory "in the face of terrible fragmentation of family solidarity caused by the domestic slave trade".

"It is an emotional object", said Mary Elliot, museum specialist with the Smithsonian, who worked on the Slavery and Freedom exhibit at the National Museum of African American History and Culture under curator Nancy Bercaw. "This piece is very important to telling that human story", Elliot said.[2]

Further reading

Notes and References

  1. News: February 28, 2016. Artifacts that will send a chill down your spine. 60 Minutes. CBS News. live. January 11, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170702232727/https://www.cbsnews.com/news/artifacts-that-will-send-a-chill-down-your-spine/. July 2, 2017.
  2. News: Cantu. Leslie. December 29, 2015. 'Filled with my love' Slave artifact to be displayed in new Smithsonian museum. The Summerville Journal Scene. live. January 11, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20210611025127/https://www.postandcourier.com/journal-scene/news/filled-with-my-love-slave-artifact-to-be-displayed-in-new-smithsonian-museum/article_f2a0eb0b-2a8a-5a62-a9a9-78f626e0f6ba.html. June 11, 2021.
  3. News: Bergengruen. Vera. September 23, 2016. This scrap of cloth is one of the saddest artifacts at new DC museum. The Kansas City Star. live. January 11, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20180220033607/https://www.kansascity.com/news/nation-world/national/article103549677.html. February 20, 2018.
  4. News: Goggins. Ben. January 28, 2016. Looking for Pearls: Ashley's Sack, Davenport dolls give insight into lives of slaves. Savannah Morning News. live. January 31, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20170202124048/https://www.savannahnow.com/column-accent/2016-01-28/looking-pearls-ashleys-sack-davenport-dolls-give-insight-lives-slaves. February 2, 2017.
  5. News: Ayer. Tammy. December 14, 2016. A stitch in time: CWU professor tracks history of embroidered seed sack to people held in slavery on South Carolina plantation. Yakima Herald-Republic. live. subscription. January 11, 2017. https://archive.today/20210611030028/https://www.yakimaherald.com/news/local/a-stitch-in-time-cwu-professor-tracks-history-of-embroidered/article_9f2d8aba-c298-11e6-8653-f7f4a912b32a.html. June 11, 2021.
  6. Story Behind Smithsonian "Ashley's Sack" Uncovered by CWU Professor. January 11, 2017. December 6, 2016. Central Washington University. live. Dawn. Alford. https://archive.today/20210611030316/https://www.cwu.edu/anthropology/story-behind-smithsonian-%E2%80%9Cashley%E2%80%99s-sack-uncovered-cwu-professor. June 11, 2021.
  7. News: December 21, 2016. The Record: Wednesday, Dec 21, Full Show. KUOW-FM. audio. live. February 3, 2017. https://web.archive.org/web/20180423033557/http://kuow.org/post/record-wednesday-dec-21-full-show. April 23, 2018.
  8. Auslander. Mark. November 29, 2016. Slavery's Traces: In Search of Ashley's Sack. live. Southern Spaces. 10.18737/M76M44. https://web.archive.org/web/20210414144527/https://southernspaces.org/2016/slaverys-traces-search-ashleys-sack/. April 14, 2021. free.
  9. Web site: McGreevy . Nora . A Simple Cotton Sack Tells an Intergenerational Story of Separation Under Slavery . 2024-02-23 . Smithsonian Magazine . en.
  10. Book: Williams, Heather Andrea . Heather A. Williams . Help me to find my people: The African American search for family lost in slavery . 2012 . . 9780807835548 . 196–197.

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