All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

Around 1918, Ruth Middleton, born Ruth Jones, moved to Philadelphia from her home in Columbia, South Carolina. It is unknown whether they met and married in South Carolina or Philadelphia, but she married a man named Arthur Middleton, who was from the same region. Ruth’s parents were named Austin and Rose (also known as Rosa), and one of them would have been Ashley’s child. Miles suggests that, given the tradition of bestowing namesakes on younger generations, Rose may have been Ashley’s daughter. Ruth and Arthur were part of the “Great Migration,” the movement of 500,000 African Americans from the rural South, many of them part of the first generations born to freedom, to major urban centers in the United States.

Following the end of the Civil War, despite federal troops in place, rural South Carolina, like much of the South, was a hostile, frightening, and dangerous place for African Americans. In the northern cities, growing resentment emerged as Black people migrated into urban areas; many white residents resented the presence of Black people, and in the late 1910s and early 1920s, there were frequent riots and rampant hostility. Ruth’s mother died when Ruth was approximately 13 years old; perhaps she inherited the sack before she moved north around age 16.

Before Arthur Middleton left to fight in World War I, Ruth and Arthur had a daughter named Dorothy, though they permanently lived apart after his return stateside. Ruth and Dorothy enjoyed a rich social life, joining numerous women’s social clubs, including the “Rotators Bridge Club, The Philedona Club, and the Conochie Club” (244). So popular and well regarded was Ruth that she was often featured in the social pages of the African American newspapers, noted for her frequent appearances at local events and for her sense of fashion, her outfits recalled in detail for their audiences. She joined St. Simon the Cyrenian Church and was photographed during her confirmation in 1940. Communities such as the church and women’s clubs that Ruth belonged to offered her insulation and protection from the social isolation and friction that Black women would have experienced in a larger city.

During this period of the early through mid-20th century, Black people, women in particular, begin to focus on domestic arts. They developed interests and invested their time in nurturing their social connections, advancing the progress of their fellow African Americans through individual mentorships and community-building efforts. Local women’s clubs were sources of solace and support in response to public defamation and shaming. After emancipation and through this period of renaissance, Black women adopted the fine needle arts. It is poignant, therefore, that Ruth chose to immortalize the story of her grandmother through the medium of embroidery and to do so by embroidering her family history directly into the sack itself.

Miles’s narrative style indicates an active, possessive intimacy that suggests that she knew Ashley personally, likely when she was a child before she left South Carolina. That she chose the words “is” and “my” in the phrase “Ashley is my grandmother” indicates that perhaps Ashley was still alive at the time, or that Ruth thought she might be. In her recollection, Ruth mentions only the women in her line, omitting any references to paternity. In this way, the sack is a matrilineal document.

Miles emphasizes that the methodical practices of the stitching process are similar to the process of repeating stories over time to process emotional trauma. Miles considers the likelihood that the story of Rose’s gift of the sack to Ashley was told to Ruth many times over the years, throughout her childhood, and that Ruth learned important truths about the women in her family, and by extension about herself, through the repetition of this story. Ruth died of tuberculosis before age 40. Her daughter Dorothy died in 1988. It can be assumed the sack was in Dorothy’s possession until her death, but it is possible she was separated from it before that time. Between 1988 and 2007 until its appearance at the flea market just outside of Nashville, the sack’s whereabouts are unknown.