Free Elm Creek Quilts [04] The Runaway Quilt by Jennifer Chiaverini Page B

passed in a frenzy to make Elm Creek Farm livable for the coming winter, I realized I did not mind the role as much as a properly brought up girl ought to have done. Anneke and Dorothea were fortunate in their choice of husbands, but other women of my acquaintance were not, and I soon learned that an unmarried woman can do and say things a wife cannot. In any event, I envisioned a future doing my part to make Elm Creek Farm prosper, looking after Hans and Anneke and their children yet to be born, being a part of their family, and never desiring one of my own.
    Winter snows had cut us off from contact with all but our closest neighbors, but the coming of spring brought a renewed liveliness to the town. Our dependence upon the kindness and generosity of others had impressed upon Anneke the importance of friends, and she became determined to establish the Bergstroms in Creek’s Crossing. Being well regarded in society would help Hans’s business, she said, and she prodded me to do my share to socialize with the wives and daughters of important men who might be in a position to help Hans later. At first I shuddered at the very notion of society, remembering how it had cost me my dearest love, but society in Creek’s Crossing bore little resemblance to that of my homeland. As one would expect, however, it remained the province of the oldest and wealthiest families, but in a land where anyone willing to work hard couldprosper, no obstacle remained to prevent the meanest immigrant from elevating his status.
    “Unless the immigrant is colored,” observed Dorothea, when I remarked upon this.
    I could not refute the obvious truth in her words, and her reflection soured the appeal of the town for me. While Pennsylvania was a Free State, and most of us took pride in our righteousness and disdained the Southern slaveholder, freedmen were not, it must be said, any more welcome here than elsewhere, except among themselves and, perhaps, the Abolitionists. As for myself, although I was a staunch opponent of the institution of slavery, I had never actually befriended a colored person, former slave or freeborn.
    This troubled me, but when I repeated Dorothea’s comment to Anneke, she merely laughed and said, “Only Dorothea would say such a thing.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Well, of course the coloreds can’t rise in society. I don’t condone slavery,” she added with great haste, because she knew my views, “but we want to keep to ourselves just as they want to keep to themselves. Only Dorothea would look upon this as a crime.”
    I did not think Dorothea was thinking of parties and balls when she talked of elevating one’s status, but rather of bettering oneself through hard work and education. The latter interested her far more than the former, as she attended few society gatherings, instead dedicating her spare hours to charity and the women’s suffrage movement.
    I must admit, the issue of women’s suffrage sparked a passion within me as well, and as time passed, and I read more of the books and newspapers Dorothea shared, I became her equal in desire for the right to vote. I even endured sewing to learn more about the movement, because as the weather improved,Dorothea welcomed to her home numerous prominent speakers of the women’s rights movement, acquaintances from back East. Invariably, since they could not drum up enough interest in our little village to fill a meeting hall, these women would speak at Dorothea’s quilting circle.
    One would suppose, perhaps, that a woman from a family of textile traders would have known of the art and craft of quilting, but I had never heard of it until emigrating to America. Dorothea and the other women of Creek’s Crossing discussed their needlework with great interest and exchanged new patterns with delight. I could not muster up such enthusiasm, but even I could see the appeal in the cunning designs Dorothea and her fellow quilters created in patchwork, and I respected the