Little Dutch Girl - Childress Brothers Farm - Kingsport, TN
Posted by: 
vhasler
N 36° 29.938 W 082° 33.981
17S E 359718 N 4040434
Just south of I-26 Exit 4 (Wilcox Drive)
Waymark Code: WM64Y9
Location: Tennessee, United States
Date Posted: 04/03/2009
Views: 4
Best viewed from gas station/Arby's across street as no real good pull-off location.
From the Quilt Trail website , we learn:
In the late 1920s, Alice Steadman Childress (the mother of the Childress Brothers, Fred, Frank, and Carl) made the Dutch Girl quilt from which the painted square on the barn is copied. The artwork was done by children (including 5th generation Childresses) and their art teacher at Sullivan Middle School, Betty O’Neill. Alice Childress became ill after her boys were born, and she had her sisters help her quilt. Alice made heirloom quilts for her sons, placed their names on them, and stored them in a cedar chest. The barn was built in the late 1920s or 1930 by the Childress brothers’ grandfather, John Childress, and his sons, Tom C. (the Childress brothers’ father), John Earl, and Tipton Childress. The barn is also a vanishing American landmark, “an advertising barn”, with the slogan, Freels Drug Store, still visible. The barn has been moved “up the creek ¼ mile” from its original site after what is now Interstate 26 was constructed.