Not only people moved from the east to west in the United States during the nineteenth century, but quilts made that journey, too. An important historic quilt associated with the American Civil War was found in a thrift store in California and given to (the late) Jan Coor-Pender Dodge, a resident of that state. This morning, I have just been reading the research paper that Lorie Chase presented at the last annual seminar of the American Quilt Study Group and now a mystery is solved!
Not having seen the detailed inscriptions on the quilt, or ever having viewed the quilt in person, I honestly had wondered about one person’s idea that the quilt must have originally been larger (with 60 blocks rather than 40 blocks). He presumed that 60 women had worked on the quilt.
Looking at a photo of the quilt, which is long and narrow and intended for a soldier’s cot, that theory did not seem logical to me. I thought to myself that if 60 women did work on the quilt, then perhaps some were involved with finishing it rather than making individual blocks.
Current scholarship reveals that the number “60″ listed on one block refers to the number of Army volunteers who mustered from Dublin, New Hampshire. Information about the quilt was kept “close to the chest” as is often the case when someone has research that has not yet been presented. Now, the truth is out!
A version of the original Nine-Patch quilt donated to the U. S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. This one was pieced by Patricia Cummings, using Civil War reproduction fabrics, and was custom machine quilted to Pat’s specifications by Tracy Zimmerman Szanto on her Gammill-Staedtler machine. This (pseudo) reproduction quilt was made as part of my own efforts to acknowledge the 150 years that have passed since the beginning of the conflict on April 12, 1861 when Confederate soldiers fired upon Union-held Fort Sumter, and was shown at the New London Historical Society in New London, NH on August 16, 2011 in conjunction with my talk about Civil War quilts and textiles.
To read all the wonderful details uncovered in Chase’s paper, be sure to order a copy of Uncoverings 2011, the journal of the American Quilt Study group, at the following link:
http://www.americanquiltstudygroup.org/index.asp
I can’t wait to read the rest of the volume!
Patricia Cummings, member of AQSG who served for one year as the first Regional Coordinator (NH, ME & VT)
