I decided not to get into the debate on quilt codes on H-Slavery but I also thought the claim that slaves didn't make quilts in the 18th century to be odd. After all, a quilt is a product of discard cloth and many 19th century plantations had sewing houses where enslaved women did stitch work of all kinds. This may have been true for some of the bigger plantation houses in the 18th century but I am not sure. I prefer to keep an open mind on the subject of "hidden transcripts" (James Scott's term from Domination and the Arts of Resistance:...) even in the form of cloth design, etc. But the specific thesis that the Underground Railroad sued a specific quilt code is at the least not proven and probably false. Harold S. Forsythe ----- Original Message ----- From: "Henry Wiencek" <[log in to unmask]> To: <[log in to unmask]> Sent: Tuesday, January 23, 2007 11:48 AM Subject: Re: "Quilt code" debunked While I agree with Nancy's comment that we have to be careful about dismissing things just because there's no documentation, the quilt story seems to have been invented recently, out of whole cloth, so to speak. Take a look at the H-SLAVERY discussions for more details on this. One historian remarked that slaves didn't make quilts in the eighteenth-century, a "blanket" assertion I'd like to check. Henry Wiencek Charlottesville To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html To subscribe, change options, or unsubscribe, please see the instructions at http://listlva.lib.va.us/archives/va-hist.html