Ricks, Martha Ann, approximately 1817-1901

found: Hicks, K.E. Martha Ann's Quilt for Queen Victoria, c2006:ECIP galley (Martha Ann; slave; b. ca. 1817 on the Doherty Plantation in Eastern Tenn.; daughter of George Erskine, a free man and traveling preacher; Martha Ann and her family sailed to Liberia in 1830; she grew up and married Sion Harris; after Sion's death, she married Henry Ricks, a widower with three sons who had a farm in the town of Clay-Ashland, Liberia; Martha Ann was 76 years old in 1892 when she boarded a ship for England to meet Queen Victoria)

found: African American National Biography, accessed March 25, 2015, via Oxford African American Studies Center database:(Ricks, Martha Ann; Martha Ann Erskine; slave, seamstress, teacher, quiltmaker; born c.1817 in Tennessee, United States; attended school in Liberia; taught at the Methodist Episcopal Mission Station school at Heddington, Liberia; participated at the Second National Fair in Monrovia (1858); stitched a quilt for the queen featuring a coffee tree in full bloom (Coffee Tree Quilt); sailed to England, toured Windsor Castle and met Queen Victoria (1892); presented the Coffee Tree Quilt to Queen Victoria, who greatly admired her fine needlework; she made a second quilt, a duplicate of the Coffee Tree Quilt, which she gave to the African Methodist Episcopal (AME) bishop Henry McNeal Turner (1895); her quilts and handcraft items were displayed on three continents (Africa, Europe, and North America) but neither of the Coffee Tree Quilts survived; died 24 July 1901 in Clay-Ashland, Liberia)