Civil War Relics

Written by:Alison Reilly

It is no secret that I am always in search of yarn crafts. I find that they pop up in the strangest of places. From the NYC cabbie crocheting as she waited for her customer, to the store selling yarn aboard a cruise ship – yarn crafts are everywhere. But I was surprised a few weekends ago when my family and I were off for a hike at a local mountain and I came face to face with some yarn crafts of the past.

We live in one of the great southern states in the US, a state known for its attachment to the history of the Civil War. So it was no shock when we stumbled into the Visitor’s Center of the park after our hike to find an exhibition with relics of the Civil War. I started looking around at the artifacts, an old picture here, some pre-war money there, when I came face to face with a knitting pattern and a crochet pattern.

The patterns I was looking at were from an old 1860’s ladies magazine named “Peterson’s.” (The book in particular that I was looking at was the 38th volume of Peterson’s from July to December from the year 1860.) The owner of the collection told me that Peterson’s was a magazine issued each month and contained lots of information on housekeeping, stories, fashion, etc. (think Ladies Home Journal but in Civil War time fashion). Each year the publisher would send out a table of contents for the previous editions. Ladies would then take these magazines to their local bookbindery and have them bound in books for easy reference.

There are several differences from the knit and crochet patterns of the 1860s to today’s patterns. I have retyped one knit and one crochet pattern from Peterson’s and you can compare them yourself. (Their copyright expired in 1923.) We here at For the Love of Yarn have not knit these up nor can we be of any help with the patterns. We just thought you’d be interested to see how our favorite yarns crafts have changed in the past 147 years.

If you do create these patterns please send us a picture of your finished work! We’d love to display the pictures in our reader’s gallery.