Repost

I am reposting this in honor of Black History Month- actually I love this story so much I just thought it should be on my blog twice.

Grandma's Quilt

This is my first entry and I would like to dedicate it to my ~Grandmother~ I have been homeschooling my children for three years now and I enjoy every minute of it. God told me to do it and He has supplied every need with each step we take in this journey. I would like to share this story with you: For the month of February I decided we should cover Black History. I went to the library and borrowed some books as usual. I was looking for a particular book called "Sweet Sarah and the Freedom Quilt". In this story Clara has a quilt that is really a map of the Underground Railroad. Each patch represents a part of the escape route. I thought that would be pretty neat to cover since we have two quilts in the house that my 85 year old great aunt had made. I noticed next to that book was another one and I basically grabbed it because it looked like it would go along with the lesson. It stayed on my shelf for about two weeks until I took it down to read it to the children. The name of this book was "The Patchwork Quilt" as I read the book it became very interesting. I found out later it was the children's version of the book "Hidden In Plain View". The adult version talked of the secret slave codes that were hidden in quilts during slavery. The quilts were to look as if they were airing out, but it was a message to the other slaves. As I looked at the patterns, one looked strangely familiar. As I began to look further into the two books, I was very surprised to discover that pattern in the book was the pattern on one of the quilts my great aunt had made!  It is called the Dresden Wheel- it was used to alert other slaves that the one who hung it out to "air" were about to make a journey on the Underground Railroad and their help would be needed to gather extra food and supplies and a cover for them to make this journey. The Dresden Wheel was from a pattern for china made in Germany. And it also represented Dresden, Ohio- a stop on the Underground Railroad. The beautiful part of my story is that my Grandmother passed away 3 years ago on a hot day on June 15th. She had her front door and back door opened as if she were hot, but she had that Dresden Quilt over her. We believe she was letting us know that she was about to take her journey from earth to glory and she was ready to go.   Here is a website I used for info and it has many different links: http://www2.lhric.org/pocantico/tubman/tubman.html