Send an E-Postcard of:
Candlewick Spread

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
Contact us for information about using this image.

In making this candlewick bed spread, Mrs. Ruth Torrey of Naples, Maine, communicates common Northern sentiments. She created this patriotic quilt proclaiming her wish, "Never Divide the Union," in the years of deep turmoil before the outbreak of the Civil War. That this quilt is made of cotton, shows that like northerners everywhere, Mrs. Torrey relied on Southern cotton. Many people in Lowell, Massachusetts, 125 miles south of Naples, opposed abolition because their city was the home of numerous textile mills which were heavily dependant on Southern cotton. The more efficient and successful Northern textile mills became, the more they demanded slave-grown cotton from the South. Whatever their opposition to abolition, once the war started, the people of Lowell supported the Union's war effort.

top of page