Carrie's Painted Quilt-Block Three "Two Women meet in the Gumbo"

 I thought it was interesting that Carrie included this image on her quilt.  It must have been a favorite story in the Lexington community and one the locals passed around through the years.  It appears to have made an impression on Carrie and one that made her laugh.  

One day two woman were walking down the sidewalk in Lexington pushing their baby carriages.  For some reason both woman decided to leave the sidewalk and cross the street.  The streets in those days were not paved. Carrie referred to it being "Black Gumbo" and "bottom land" in those days.  When it was wet and the wagons went through it, it got to be a real "clay pool".  

Side note:  I didn't know what she was talking about when she called the mud in the streets as "black gumbo" so of course I had to go and do a little research and this is what I found.  

"Gumbo in this state is a black clay soil, occurring only on very level areas, either river bottoms or flat uplands. It contains 90 to 97 per cent of silt and clay, the remainder being very fine sand. The clay content runs from 25 to 50 per cent. It may thus be classed with the heaviest clays.- The term “ gumbo” as used in this bulletin, refers to heavy, black clay surface soil, and not to the almost impervious gray or yellow clay subsurface soil which geologists refer to as gumbo and which is locally often called hard-pan."  from Bulletin 119, " The Gumbo Soil of Iowa", January 1911, Iowa State College. Ames Iowa

As the women crossed the muddy street, they met in the middle.  One of the women, reached into the carriage of the other woman and put her hand under the chin of the baby and proceeded to call it a "little monkey".  This angered the mother of the baby and she "floored" the woman who called her baby a monkey.  They began to fight and during the scuffle they knocked over the carriages and Carrie said the "babies got down in the gumbo"  Constable Scott had to be called and put a stop to the fighting.  When she was telling the story she also mentioned at the time there were two constables in Lexington.  

I did a little bit of research on Newspapers.com to see if I could find a news article on the fight, but haven't found anything yet.  I did see that there was a Constable by the name of Fred Scott.  There was also another constable in Cleveland County by the name of W. T. Scott.  So it could have been either one of them.