For slaves, quilts likely held codes to freedom

It’s estimated more 100,000 slaves traveled from the south north to freedom from the Revolutionary War to the Civil War on what’s called the Underground Railroad.

It was no railroad at all — no ties, no tracks, but a series of safe houses and stops meant to aide and help slaves on their journey north across thousands of miles of difficult terrain to Ohio and Canada where they could be free men and women.

Safehouses were known as “stations” and those who helped were known as “conductors” and the runaways themselves were called “passengers.”

The name Underground Railroad is from the story of a slave owner who remarked that it was as if a slave of his has escaped by an “underground railroad.”

Harriet Tubman was the best known conductor in American history, helping more than 300 fugitives find home to freedom.

Tubman likely used a secret language and songs to warn slaves of danger and, conversely, of safety. But there is strong evidence that conductors and safe houses also used another secret language — symbols that were sewn into quilts. A quilt hanging on a line outside a home could very well signal a safe house or another important instruction to an escaped slave, most of whom could not read, said Doris Koeneman, a Columbia Falls quilter and member of the Teakettle Quilt Guild.

Koeneman and her colleagues recently completed a quilt that tells the story of the Underground Railroad in code. If you know the meaning of the squares, you can decipher the instructions for the journey.

For example, the log cabin square with a black center signals a safe house, Koeneman explained.

Koeneman said the quilt took well over a year to put together — it’s over 7 feet long and 7 feet wide.

The colors of the quilt are muted to reflect the dyes that would have been used at that time.

The quilt is very well done.

Koeneman has a long history as a seamstress.

“I made my own clothes at 13,” she said.

She has a degree in dressmaking and design and did that professionally when she lived in Oregon. She’s been quilting now for the past six years, she said.

Koeneman said she and the members of the guild wanted the quilt to hang in the Columbia Falls library in commemoration of Black History Month. It, along with literature explaining the quilt, is on display now.