A quilt on display in the farmhouse at the Rochester Hills Museum at Van Hoosen Farm is a window to the charitable work of a Rochester women’s organization that served the community for three-quarters of a century.
One year after the Civil War ended, the Grand Army of the Republic (GAR) was formed as a veterans’ advocacy and fraternal organization to support former Union soldiers. Soon, local posts were formed in communities across the northern tier of states. Rochester’s post was chartered in 1887 with 34 members and was named for William Perry Everett, a local veteran of the 22nd Michigan Volunteer Infantry who had died the year before the post was organized.
Meanwhile, the wives, widows, mothers, and daughters of Civil War veterans formed an adjunct organization of the GAR. Called the Woman’s Relief Corps (WRC), it began as a local effort in Massachusetts in 1879, and in 1883, it was formally authorized as the official auxiliary of the GAR. As the veterans of the Civil War began to age, the WRC made its mission to see to the needs of impoverished, disabled, and aging veterans, or the widows and orphans of those veterans. In addition to its charitable work on behalf of veterans and their families, the WRC sought to inspire patriotism and civic participation. WRC chapters partnered with GAR posts in towns across the U.S. to ensure that Memorial Day and other patriotic holidays were properly observed and that the graves of fallen soldiers were cared for with dignity and respect in cemeteries large and small.
The women of Rochester organized a Woman’s Relief Corps chapter on April 8, 1892, with 18 members signing the charter. By 1900, Rochester’s WRC had a membership of 30 and was active with the local GAR post in the village’s annual Memorial Day observances. Nationally, the WRC was one of the largest charitable organizations in the U.S. at the turn of the twentieth century, having raised and distributed over $2.1 million by 1901. Typically, a local post raised money through rummage sales, dinners, and the sale or auction of quilts and other needlework handmade by the women of the post.
A quilt in the collection of the Rochester Hills Museum at Van Hoosen Farm is an example of the handwork of the women in Rochester’s WRC post and may have been part of the post’s fundraising efforts. The center panel of the quilt identifies it as the work of WRC Post 227 of Rochester, Michigan, and bears the date of 1913. The words of the WRC motto, “Fraternity, Charity, Loyalty,” are embroidered around the edges of the center block.
When this quilt was created in 1913, President Emma Kressler, wife of lumber dealer and building contractor Daniel B. Kressler, led Rochester’s WRC post. Other officers that year were Sarah Snook, wife of John J. Snook, Rochester’s “poet laureate” and veteran of the 22nd Michigan, and Martha Worthley, widow of John R. Worthley, a veteran of the 3rd New York Infantry who had been a charter member of Rochester’s W.P. Everett GAR post.
As Rochester’s civil war veterans aged and passed away, the membership of the W.P. Everett GAR post declined. In 1919, the post disbanded because it lacked enough able-bodied members to answer roll call. The WRC post, however, continued its work by enlisting the next generation of civic-minded women who were willing to commit to the organization’s mission. The women of the Rochester WRC chapter continued to care for veteran graves and participate in Memorial Day observances until 1966, when by virtue of the age of its members and declining enrollment, the post could no longer function.
In addition to the WRC quilt in the collections of the Rochester Hills Museum, the organization left behind another tangible example of its work. In 1911, the post erected a Civil War memorial at Mount Avon Cemetery. The statue, locally known as “Billy Yank” and paid for through WRC fundraising activities, stands in the cemetery’s main driveway and has maintained its sentinel gaze over Rochester’s fallen soldiers for over a century.
To view the WRC quilt and other artifacts that instruct us about Rochester’s history, visit the Rochester Hills Museum at Van Hoosen Farm.
About Deborah J. Larsen