A black family's history stitched on a sack

"This was the 1850s, roughly a decade before Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation, setting slaves free.

Before mother and daughter were separated, Rose gave Ashley a cotton sack. It contained a tattered dress, three handfuls of pecans and a lock of her hair. Rose told Ashley it was filled with love — always.

Ashley never saw her mom again, but she kept the sack. It was handed down through the generations, along with her story, to her granddaughter, Ruth Middleton.

Ruth, a single mom in Philadelphia, stitched her family story into the cloth sack in 1921."

Full story:

http://archive.kuow.org/post/slave-mothers-love-56-carefully-stitched-words
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