I used to feel that overwhelming need to portray a dashing and daring heroine, but then something very ordinary happened that changed my mind, and I’d like to tell you about it.

When my husband and I were visiting his grandmother a few years ago, Grandma went downstairs to the basement and brought up an old double wedding ring quilt to line the crib where our youngest baby was sleeping. It was a beautiful thing, with the piecing done just so, and the colors laid out exactly, like a cathedral window, all put together from the pieces of their lives. It was a bit tattered and stained, but still quite lovely, and I asked her about the quilt, more to make conversation with an in-law I wasn’t that well acquainted with than anything else. She told me that the quilt was one of the few items they had been able to salvage when their farm house burned down in 1965. Knowing that my husband had fond memories of staying on the farm with his grandparents, I was intrigued, so I asked if she knew how old the quilt was, and how long it had been in the family. "Oh, I used to sleep under that quilt when I was little girl. (near the turn of the century) You might be interested in the story of that quilt, because you’re interested in the Civil War. That quilt was pieced by my grandmother, and quilted by my great-grandmother Jackson. She was the aunt that helped raise Stonewall, you know. The batting from that quilt came right off their own farm."

I could suddenly see a woman tending the cook fire in a dress made from the green fabric there on the corner. Or a young man’s tattered shirt sleeve in the blue and white stripe along the arch of the wedding ring. And a little girl swinging from a rope while playing in a dress made from that pink and white farther in toward the middle. I smiled a little, wondering if there was truly a piece of Stonewall Jackson in this quilt, and said, "Boy, I wish this quilt could talk."

Then it occurred to me that this quilt was the legacy these women had left behind. There were no letters, no diaries, and not even a photograph in the album. I don’t know what those women looked like, and I can only guess at their feelings when they learned that Stonewall had fallen, and later watched his daughters grow up without him. But I had pieces of their dresses. And as I touched these pieces of their lives, these cotton jewels that they had left behind, I realized that theirs was the story I wanted to tell. I wanted to bring these silent and forgotten women into the light, and the only voice that these woman had came from the tattered quilt laying in my lap.

I thought then of the multitudes of nameless, faceless women who never visited a fancy photographer’s studio. The women who didn’t leave a written record behind, and whose cotton dresses had gone to quilts to warm her chlidren, or rugs to cover her floors, or cleaning rags to keep her house neat. I believed that their sacrifices, their courage and determination, and the awesome strength of their character deserved to be remembered. As a reenactor, I had a ready vehicle at my disposal that would allow me to reflect the lives of these women.

So I’m the woman in the plain cotton homespun dress. There’s nothing special about this dress, certainly nothing fancy to catch the eye. But it’s a good dress. It keeps me covered while I work, and the hem will dry the tear of a child who’s fallen down. The sleeve will wipe the sweat from my brow as I’m kneading the bread for supper, and it’s sturdily made, so I can scrub the laundry when it’s needful. And if my hands worry the sides of the skirt in my anxiety as the reports of the wounded come across the telegraph, the fabric is strong, and the cotton forgiving. The skirt will shelter a bashful child if an unknown uniform rides past.

The dress will last, as the women lasted. Not the fleeting fashion plate that flitted around the ballrooms of Richmond collecting secrets like miser’s pennies, but the sturdy work dress of the farm wife who kept the home fires burning while her husband was marching, and fighting, and dying. .

And someday, when the fabric is worn and torn and stained, perhaps it will make a dress for my daughter. And the scraps will make quilt scraps, that nothing will be wasted. And then my dress will speak again, to someone far away, who will listens hard enough to hear my story whispering from many years away.