The block library puts About at the top of each page. I meant it for a little history, construction notes, and random info. Flavor, not a thesis.
I started researching alphabetically and kept finding real people and real histories under unassuming block names. Some of those stories are heavier than I expected. A lot of blocks also carry Underground Railroad meaning in the oral tradition.
Barbara Fritchie Star is one that stopped me. An elderly woman at a window in Frederick, a Union flag, and quilters later putting her among women like Tubman and Sojourner Truth. Whether every line of Whittier's poem is fact, the name stuck because that kind of courage mattered.
Ohio Star is another. Oberlin. Mary Leary Langston. Her husband Lewis Sheridan Leary died at twenty-four fighting alongside John Brown at Harpers Ferry. There is a quilt made in her honor at the International Quilt Museum.
I set out to add flavor to the site. I didn't know how much of American women's history I was walking into until I was already writing it.