Quilt code
Dublin Core
Title
Quilt code
Subject
underground railroad quilts
Description
This quilt, on display in Jacksonville, Illinois' Woodlawn Farm historic site, is represented to illustrate the Underground Railroad's reliance on quilts to communicate secret information among fugitive slaves. Folk tales about such quilts claim that their knots and patterns told about how and where to travel. For example, a monkey wrench pattern directed slaves to carry their tools. A flying geese pattern pointed the direction slaves should travel. The bow tie and shoofly patterns directed slaves to wear better clothing than they did as slaves, to avoid detection in cities. A drunkards path pattern directed slaves to travel in a zig zag pattern, which, not coincidentally, was also the alleged pattern of safe houses. The star pattern directed slaves to follow the North Star. But underground railroad quilts, as a tool of freedom seekers, is a myth. The myth of the quilt reflects the fact that fugitive slaves and their allies communicated in secret, but relies on false assumptions about slave catchers’ naivete and slaves’ involvement with, and dependence on, a domestic production of white middle class society.
Creator
Woodlawn Farm historic site
Date
1840-1860s
Rights
Woodlawn Farm historic site
Format
jpeg image
Type
image
Identifier
WIUGRR #14
Coverage
Illinois, United States
Still Image Item Type Metadata
Original Format
hand-knitted quilt
Files
Citation
Woodlawn Farm historic site, “Quilt code,” Traces of Western Illinois' Underground Railroad, accessed May 8, 2024, https://timroberts.org/wiugrr/items/show/14.