• Visit
    • Plan Your Visit
    • Dining Options
    • Military Branch
    • State Capitol
    • Tennessee Residence
    • Green McAdoo Cultural Center
    • Accessibility
    • Museum Store
    • About Us
      • History and Mission Statement
      • Museum Management
      • Douglas Henry State Museum Commission
      • Contact
    • Resources
  • Home
  • Exhibitions
    • Collections
      • Search Our Collection
      • Collection Scope
    • Permanent Exhibitions
      • Tennessee Time Tunnel
      • Natural History
      • First Peoples
      • Forging a Nation
      • The Civil War and Reconstruction
      • Change and Challenge
      • Tennessee Transforms
    • Temporary Exhibitions
      • A Better Life for Their Children (Opens Feb. 24, 2023)
      • STARS: Elementary Visual Art Exhibition 2023
      • Early Expressions: Art in Tennessee Before 1900
      • In Search of the New: Art in Tennessee Since 1900
      • Why Do Museums Collect
    • Online Exhibitions
      • Tennessee at 225
      • Ratified! Statewide!
      • Canvassing Tennessee: Artists and Their Environments
    • Past Exhibitions
      • Painting the Smokies
      • Tennessee at 225
      • Best of Tennessee Craft
      • Ratified! Tennessee Women and the Right to Vote
      • Tennessee and the Great War: A Centennial Exhibition
      • STARS: Elementary Art Exhibition 2022
      • Cordell Hull: Tennessee's Father of the United Nations
      • Lets Eat! Origins and Evolutions of Tennessee Food
      • The State of Sound: Tennessee’s Musical Heritage
      • Red Grooms: A Retrospective
      • Between The Layers: Art and Story in Tennessee Quilts
    • Children's Gallery
  • Education
    • Field Trips
      • On-Site Field Trips
      • On-Site Field Trip Request Form
      • Virtual Field Trips
      • Virtual Field Trips Request Form
    • Traveling Trunks & Reservations
      • Reserve a Trunk
      • From Barter to Budget, Financial Literacy in Tennessee
      • The Life and Times of the First Tennesseans
      • Daily Life on the Tennessee Frontier
      • Cherokee in Tennessee: Their Life, Culture, and Removal
      • The Age of Jackson and Tennessee’s Legendary Leaders
      • The Life of a Civil War Soldier
      • The Lives of Three Tennessee Slaves and Their Journey Towards Freedom
      • The Three Rs of Reconstruction: Rights, Restrictions and Resistance.
      • Understanding Women's Suffrage: Tennessee's Perfect 36
      • Transforming America: Tennessee on the World War II Homefront
      • The Modern Movement for Civil Rights in Tennessee
      • Tennessee: Its Land & People
    • Professional Development
    • Tennessee4Me
  • Programs & Events
    • Calendar of Events
    • Videos
    • TN Writers | TN Stories
    • Passport to Tennessee History
    • Newsletter Signup
  • TSM Kids
    • Kids Home
    • Children's Gallery
    • Junior Curators Blog
    • Storytime
    • Color Our Collection
    • Jigsaw Puzzles
    • Girl Scout Patch
  • Donate
  • Blogs and More
    • Thousands of Stories
    • Your Story Our Story
    • Junior Curators
    • Quarterly Newsletters
  • Plan Your Visit
  • Donate
  • Events
  • Search
TN State Museum logo Tn State Museum mark
  • Visit
    • Plan Your Visit
    • Dining Options
    • Military Branch
    • State Capitol
    • Tennessee Residence
    • Green McAdoo Cultural Center
    • Accessibility
    • Museum Store
    • About Us
      • History and Mission Statement
      • Museum Management
      • Douglas Henry State Museum Commission
      • Contact
    • Resources
  • Home
  • Exhibitions
    • Collections
      • Search Our Collection
      • Collection Scope
    • Permanent Exhibitions
      • Tennessee Time Tunnel
      • Natural History
      • First Peoples
      • Forging a Nation
      • The Civil War and Reconstruction
      • Change and Challenge
      • Tennessee Transforms
    • Temporary Exhibitions
      • A Better Life for Their Children (Opens Feb. 24, 2023)
      • STARS: Elementary Visual Art Exhibition 2023
      • Early Expressions: Art in Tennessee Before 1900
      • In Search of the New: Art in Tennessee Since 1900
      • Why Do Museums Collect
    • Online Exhibitions
      • Tennessee at 225
      • Ratified! Statewide!
      • Canvassing Tennessee: Artists and Their Environments
    • Past Exhibitions
      • Painting the Smokies
      • Tennessee at 225
      • Best of Tennessee Craft
      • Ratified! Tennessee Women and the Right to Vote
      • Tennessee and the Great War: A Centennial Exhibition
      • STARS: Elementary Art Exhibition 2022
      • Cordell Hull: Tennessee's Father of the United Nations
      • Lets Eat! Origins and Evolutions of Tennessee Food
      • The State of Sound: Tennessee’s Musical Heritage
      • Red Grooms: A Retrospective
      • Between The Layers: Art and Story in Tennessee Quilts
    • Children's Gallery
  • Education
    • Field Trips
      • On-Site Field Trips
      • On-Site Field Trip Request Form
      • Virtual Field Trips
      • Virtual Field Trips Request Form
    • Traveling Trunks & Reservations
      • Reserve a Trunk
      • From Barter to Budget, Financial Literacy in Tennessee
      • The Life and Times of the First Tennesseans
      • Daily Life on the Tennessee Frontier
      • Cherokee in Tennessee: Their Life, Culture, and Removal
      • The Age of Jackson and Tennessee’s Legendary Leaders
      • The Life of a Civil War Soldier
      • The Lives of Three Tennessee Slaves and Their Journey Towards Freedom
      • The Three Rs of Reconstruction: Rights, Restrictions and Resistance.
      • Understanding Women's Suffrage: Tennessee's Perfect 36
      • Transforming America: Tennessee on the World War II Homefront
      • The Modern Movement for Civil Rights in Tennessee
      • Tennessee: Its Land & People
    • Professional Development
    • Tennessee4Me
  • Programs & Events
    • Calendar of Events
    • Videos
    • TN Writers | TN Stories
    • Passport to Tennessee History
    • Newsletter Signup
  • TSM Kids
    • Kids Home
    • Children's Gallery
    • Junior Curators Blog
    • Storytime
    • Color Our Collection
    • Jigsaw Puzzles
    • Girl Scout Patch
  • Donate
  • Blogs and More
    • Thousands of Stories
    • Your Story Our Story
    • Junior Curators
    • Quarterly Newsletters

Enter a search request and press enter. Press Esc or the X to close.

Close
Stories Header
Stories Header
1 Stories Header
  • Home
  • Blogs and More
  • Thousands of Stories

10-5-21

Following the Seams: The Nancy Reece Story

This story originally appeared in the Summer 2021 print edition of the Tennessee State Museum Quarterly Newsletter.


by Annabeth Hayes and Amanda McCrary Smith

In June, the Museum opened a new self-guided tour and online exhibition, Tennessee at 225: Highlights from the Collection, to commemorate Tennessee’s 225 years of statehood. While each of the 100 objects we chose for the tour tells a story, looking closely at one, Nancy Reece’s sampler (TN225 artifact No. 18), illustrates how deep those stories can go.

Reece was a Cherokee woman who lived in present-day Chattanooga. She was born in 1815 to a multi-racial Cherokee family. As a child, she and her brothers attended school at the Brainerd Mission. Established in 1816 along the Chickamauga Creek, Brainerd was part of a larger national trend of established institutions designed to assimilate Indigenous people to the ways of white, Christian, settler society. More than 300 Cherokee people of southeast Tennessee were enrolled in the student body of Brainerd Mission to learn English, convert to Christianity, and to accept the traditional roles, crafts, and chores that men and women of colonial societies considered appropriate. Young women like Reece learned crafts such as spinning fiber into yarn for knitting and sewing.


Image of Nancy Reece Sampler

Cherokee Sampler made by Nancy Reece, 1823 (Tennessee State Museum collection, 2016.260)


Reece made this sampler at Brainerd in 1823, when she was about 8 years old. Samplers, such as this one, often served as educational tools that assisted young women in learning the alphabet and numbers, and many featured biblical verses or poems. For Reece, an Indigenous woman, samplers were also a way to learn the imposed English language instruction of Brainerd’s missionary curriculum. While Brainerd was the largest school of its type among the Eastern Cherokee, it was often in need of funding. Reece and other students often wrote to potential benefactors describing the Western education they received and how Christianity influenced their lifestyles.

As a young woman, Reece continued to live in the Chattanooga area until the Cherokee and other Southeastern Indian nations were removed from the Southeast and forcibly relocated to the Indian Territory in Oklahoma. Shortly before removal, Reece married a Cherokee man named Joseph Starr. The year after they married, the young couple were among the first group of Cherokee to make the difficult journey from Chattanooga to Oklahoma, along what is known as the Trail of Tears.


Installation view of the Museum's Forging a Nation Gallery

Installation view of the Museum's Forging a Nation Gallery


The Trail of Tears consisted of multiple routes across the Southeast. Some groups were forced to walk on foot or travel by wagon. Some had to travel by boat. White men called conductors often led these groups, known as detachments. Some conductors kept daily journals to monitor weather and travel conditions, which could be later shared with other detachments that followed. B.B. Cannon was a conductor who kept a journal which mentions Reece and Starr. The conductor led Reece, her husband, and 363 other Cherokee people on the Northern Route of the Trail of Tears. They had to cross the Mississippi River into Missouri, and travel over fifteen counties before ultimately passing through Arkansas. This was considered one of the safer routes on the Trail of Tears. Two other detachments later followed the same route. On December 15, 1837, Cannon noted in his journal, “Joseph Starrs [sic] wife had a child last night.” After traveling over fifteen miles in one day, Nancy Reece had her first child on the Trail of Tears. The next day, Cannon noted the group traveled another almost eleven miles.


"Map Showing the Lands Assigned to Emigrant Indians West of Arkansas & Missouri," 1836 (Tennessee State Museum Collection, 1997.147)

"Map Showing the Lands Assigned to Emigrant Indians West of Arkansas & Missouri," 1836 (Tennessee State Museum Collection, 1997.147)


While some people in their detachment died on the journey, Reece, Starr, and their son, Jug, completed the journey to Oklahoma. In 1852, they were documented as living in the Skin Bayou District. Reece and Starr had two more children in Oklahoma. It is unknown if she ever returned to her home in Tennessee before she died in 1875. Through her sampler, we are able to piece together part of her story. By connecting her life to the story of Cherokee education and forced removal, it is an example of the transformation of Tennessee’s physical and cultural landscape.


Annabeth Hayes

Annabeth Hayes is the Tennessee State Museum curator of decorative arts

Amanda McCrary Smith Headshot

Amanda McCray Smith is the Tennessee State Museum curator of textiles and fashion

Posted by Joseph Pagetta at 10:52
Native American History Native Americans
Share |
  • « 'Mastodons to Mississippians' Explores Middle Tennessee's Ancient Past
  • Women and the Elizabethton Rayon Strike of 1929 »

TN State Museum logo
Resources
  • About Us
  • Press Room
  • Title VI
  • Venue Rental
  • Jobs
  • Public Records Policy
  • Museum and Copyright Policies
  • Douglas Henry State Museum Commission
  • Public Meetings
  • Social Media Guidelines
  • Contact
Contact

Bill Haslam Center
1000 Rosa L. Parks Blvd
Nashville, TN 37208

(615) 741-2692

(800) 407-4324

info@tnmuseum.org

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Instagram
  • YouTube
  • Trip Advisor
Tennessee State Museum © 2023 Memphis Web Design by Speak