Trail of Thread Book Series

This book series is about Linda Hubalek’s mother’s ancestors. The John and Deborah Pieratt family traveled from Kentucky, and the Margaret Ralston Kennedy family from Ohio, to homestead beside each other in Kansas.

Their children, from the North and the South, marry during the Civil War. These books are written in letter form, covering the years 1854 to 1865.

Twelve quilt patterns are featured in each book of this series.

Trail of Thread- Book 1

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Taste the dust of the road and feel the wind in your face as you travel with the Pieratt family by wagon trail from Kentucky to the new Territory of Kansas in 1854.

Find out what is was like for the thousands of families who made the cross-country journey into the unknown.

In this first book of the Trail of Thread book series, in the form of letters she wrote on the journey, Deborah Pieratt describes the scenery, the everyday events on the trail, and the task of tasking care of her family. Stories of humor and despair, along with her ongoing remarks about camping, cooking, and quilting, make you feel as if you pulled up stakes and are traveling with the Pieratts too.

But hints of the brewing trouble ahead plagued them along the way as people questioned their motive for settling in the new territory. Why didn’t a Southern family have slaves with them? Would the Pieratt vote for or against legal slavery in the new state? Though Deborah didn’t realize it, her letters show how this trip affected her family for generations to come.

Thimble of Soil- Book 2

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Experience the terror of the fighting and the determination to endure as you stake a claim alongside the women caught in the bloody conflict of Kansas in the 1850s.
Follow the widowed Margaret Ralston Kennedy as she travels with eight of her thirteen children from Ohio to the territory of Kansas in 1855. Thousands of Americans headed west in the decade before the Civil War, but those who settled in Kansas suffered through the frequent clashes between proslavery and free-state fractions that gripped the territory.
Margaret was dedicated to the cause of the North and while the male members of her family were away fighting for a free state, she valiantly defended their homesteads and held their families together through the savage years of “Bleeding Kansas”.
Told through her letters, Thimble of Soil describes the prevalent hardships and infrequent joys experienced by the hardy pioneer women of Kansas, who struggled to protect their families from terrorists raids while building new homes and new lives on the vast unbroken prairie.

 Stitch of Courage- Book 3

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Face the uncertainty, doubt and danger faced by the pioneer women of Kansas as they defend their homes and pray for their men during the Civil War.

We think the Civil War took place in the South, but the plains states endured their share of battles and tragedy. Not only did Kansas and Missouri experience a resurgence in the terrorist raids that had plagued them in the years before the war, but the Confederate Army tried several times to sweep across the Great Plains and capture the West.

Stitch of Courage, the third book in the Trail of Thread series, tells the story of the orphaned Maggie Kennedy, who followed her brothers to Kansas in the late 1850’s. The niece of Margaret Ralston Kennedy, of Thimble of Soil, Maggie married the son of Deborah Pieratt, who story was told in Trail of Thread.

In letters to her sister in Ohio, Maggie describes how the women of Kansas faced the demons of the Civil War, fighting bravely to protect their homes and families while never knowing from one day to the next whether their men were alive or dead on the faraway battlefield.

Strong Women

The complete ebook set of the Trail of Thread books, Trail of Thread, Thimble of Soil, and Stitch of Courage.

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