All That She Carried: The Journey of Ashley's Sack, a Black Family Keepsake

Miles opens her work with the decisive event that precipitated the sale of a nine-year-old enslaved girl named Ashley. On December 12, 1852, Robert Martin, a wealthy Charleston “planter” with numerous properties across the South Carolina Lowcountry succumbed to a “brain disease,” dying at the age of 61. Comprising the assets counted as belonging to the Martin estate were enslaved people, one of them a woman named Rose of approximately 34 years of age, and her daughter Ashley. When a landholder like Martin died, it was inevitably a terrifying and turbulent time for the enslaved people held as property by his estate. In the execution of an enslaver’s last will and testament, enslaved people were often sold along with land, properties, and assets to liquidate the estate and execute the wishes of the deceased. Rose knew that Martin’s death meant that her own sale, and that of her daughter, was highly likely.

With fears of their separation in mind, Rose packed for her daughter a cotton sack with an inventory of resources that her child could carry with her and cherish as she faced the consequences of their shared condition of powerlessness alone. Among the thematic elements Miles considered as she embarked upon her research into “Ashley’s Sack” were the notion of how individuals utterly stripped of their rights managed to exert autonomy and agency despite the limitations imposed upon them by their circumstances. She evaluated how someone who was devalued in every sense of the word by the oppression and degradation she endured might assert their own values and morality as far as they were able to do so. Miles emphasizes that Rose’s actions in the moment as she packed the sack in the winter of 1852 have had exponential impacts on the lives of her descendants, as well as the lives of everyone who now encounters this precious artifact of African American history.

In 1921, Ruth Middleton, an African American woman living in Philadelphia, embroidered on a cotton seed sack an account of her family’s legacy:

My great grandmother Rose / Mother of Ashley gave her this sack when / she was sold at age 9 in South Carolina / it held a tattered dress 3 handfulls of / pecans a braid of Roses hair. Told her / It be filled with my Love always / She never saw her again / Ashley is my grandmother / Ruth Middleton / 1921 (6).

The first lines of the inscription, from “My” through to “her,” are embroidered in brown thread; “It be filled with my Love always” is embroidered in red thread, and the remainder of the testament is rendered in green. The word “Love” is capitalized, and the line in which it is contained features dominantly at the center of the embroidery. Ashley’s Sack is 29 and 11/16 inches high by 15 and 3/4 inches wide, made of plain-weave cotton, and produced by machine for agrarian purposes, constructed for durability and longevity. It has been carefully repaired and patched throughout its existence, a sign of obvious care for and attachment to this artifact.

Through an example from her own family history, Miles relates how the preservation of family legacy through recollections of pivotal moments in its shared history is a cherished component of Black familial culture. Miles mentions that her interest in Ashley’s Sack was in part inspired by the connection she felt to familial storytelling, which she experienced through her relationship with her own grandmother. Precious antiques passed down between generations hold a special significance for African American families, so often dispossessed of their belongings under stressful and exploitative circumstances.

Ashley’s Sack is a rarity in the annals of historical collections. While the palatial estates and personal effects rendered into existence by Black artisans for the fulfillment of white needs and desires endure, “things enslaved people touched, made, used, and carried” are disproportionately scarce (19). Miles discloses her obligation as a historian to apply a measure of incredulity to evaluating critically the facts stated by the sack. She states, “Using the object responsibly means asking questions of it” (16). Accounts of the lives of enslaved Black women are largely absent from the historical record. Miles writes, “Because archives do not faithfully reveal or honor the enslaved, tending this intimacy with the dead necessitates new methods, including a trans-temporal consciousness and use of restrained imagination” (18). Miles draws upon the writings of 19th- and 20th-century Black women whose writings about their own life experiences inform and shed light upon the realities that Rose and Ashley endured. Harriet Jacobs, Elizabeth Keckley, Louisa Piquet, Eliza Potter, Melnea Cass, and Mamie Garvin Fields all feature throughout All That She Carried. Miles also discloses that despite the near certainty that the historical Rose and Ashley have been correctly identified by her research, it is impossible to know for certain whether they are indeed the very same two. Of All That She Carried, Miles reflects “It leans toward evocation rather than argumentation and is rather more meditation than monograph” (21).