Lakin’s community pride is in full bloom with beautiful locally made barn quilts adorning our downtown. Due to the Hwy 25/Main Street construction project, the Lakin Community Empowerment Group opted to forego planting flowers in the pots that line Main Street because they knew they would not be able to get their watering tank up and down the street. Instead, the group came up with the idea of displaying barn quilts painted by talented senior citizens in our community. The beautiful assortment of homemade art brings a little extra color and charm to Lakin.
Barn quilts are a unique form of American folk art that pieces together history, identity and community pride. Unlike traditional quilts made of fabric, barn quilts are usually painted on large wooden squares, but canvas, metal and vinyl/pvc products are also used. Barn quilts typically feature familiar quilt patterns, but their meanings can go far beyond appearances. For many, these symbols represent cherished heirlooms, ancestral stories, or local heritage passed down through generations.
The tradition’s roots in America date back nearly 300 years to European immigrants from countries like Germany, Austria and the Netherlands who brought folk art customs like painting symbols on homes and barns to the New World. These “painted prayers” were meant to bring good luck or denote family farms, and early designs were replicas of popular quilt designs at the time thought to protect livestock and bless the harvest. Each distinctive quilt pattern served another purpose – navigation. Travelers could identify different households or farms by recognizing unique patchwork designs painted on local barns.
According to Folk Art History of Barn Quilts, “As these settlers made homes in the American colonies, particularly Pennsylvania, they carried on this visual language using stars, pinwheels, and bright, symbolic patterns.”
A theory that quilts and barn quilts were used as part of the Underground Railroad as signals pointing runaway slaves to safety is a fascinating concept that has captured the public imagination and appeared in many children’s books, school curricula and museums. According to the B&O Railroad Museum, the ‘Quilt Code’ was “used to help freedom seekers memorize directions and activities they may have needed for escape. While there were 10 different quilts used to guide enslaved people to safety in free territory, one was employed at a time. In order to memorize the code, sampler quilts would be constructed with one pattern next to the other. When the time came, the first of the ten quilts would be laid out either in the window or on a clothesline. Blocks like the Log Cabin, North Star, Flying Geese, Monkey Wrench, Bow Tie, Bear’s Paw, Crossroads, and Wagon Wheel are said to have carried specific meanings – ranging from instructions to gather supplies or change clothing, to cues about following animal trails, heading toward major junctions, or navigating northward. Each quilt served as a silent signal in a larger sequence, guiding freedom seekers from one stage of preparation to the next.”
The ‘Quilt Code’ narrative first gained widespread attention in the 1999 book Hidden in Plain View by Jacqueline Tobin and Raymond Dobard; however, most historians, Underground Railroad researchers, and textile scholars view the ‘Quilt Code’ as a modern myth rather than historical fact. Historians have scoured 19th Century slave narratives, diaries, abolitionist journals, plantation records, oral testimonies taken in the 1930s from former slaves, and government records. They have found no mention of quilts being used for coded communication, and some argue that hanging multiple, intricate quilts in specific sequences in public view would have been a dangerous practice as it may have drawn attention and suspicion that those escaping slavery were trying to avoid. Furthermore, the specific geometric patterns like the Log Cabin and Monkey Wrench were reportedly either not invented yet or did not have those specific meanings during the era of the Underground Railroad.
Giles R. Wright, director of the Afro-American History Program at the New Jersey Historical Commission, opined that the authors of Hidden in Plain View have taken folklore and attempted to turn it into historical fact without providing evidence or documentation. “I know of no historian who supports this idea, and it’s extremely rare to get that kind of consensus.”
Tobin said she and Dobard made it clear that Hidden in Plain View was based on an oral account given by Ozella McDaniel Williams, an African-American quilter and retired educator. From one generation to the next, Williams’ family had passed down the story connecting quilts to the Underground Railroad. Tobin commented that such codes could have been used in this way but perhaps only on one particular plantation. US News & World Report quoted Tobin as saying, “We’re not talking about hundreds or thousands of folks using this code. The story has grown in ways that we had not intended.”
Beyond deciphering whether or not barn quilts (or fabric quilts for that matter) were actually integral to the Underground Railroad, the fact remains that barn quilts have become colorful and symbolic emblems in the modern American landscape. The folk-art medium experienced a resurgence in the early 2000s when Donna Sue Groves of Adams County, Ohio created the concept of barn quilt trails. Wanting to honor her mother’s quilting heritage, she persuaded her neighbors to hang painted wooden squares that resembled quilt blocks on their barns.
Groves’ idea sparked a nationwide revival and one of the fastest-growing grassroots public arts movements in the United States and Canada. Barn quilt trails can now be found in almost all 50 states and in parts of Canada promoting regional tourism, supporting artisans, and preserving old barns. Outside of the coordinated trails, thousands of crafters have created barn quilts for their homes, businesses, and communities simply because they love the colorful pieces of art.
You can check out some of the beautiful barn quilts displayed on Lakin’s Main Street at https://www.facebook.com/LakinPRIDE.
SOURCES: Clark County Iowa Public Library; Primitive Star Quilt Shop; Lafferty Funeral Home; Barn Quilt Addicts on Facebook; National Geographic; US News & World Report; historiccamdencounty.com; Lakin Community Empowerment Group; and Heroes, Heroines & History.