Rachelly Roggel's Redwork Signature Quilt
Chapter 13
Photo by Rachelly Roggel, www.roggel.com
The 1905 quilt block, shown above, appears on a Redwork Signature Quilt Top that originated in Middlefield, New York. Its owner, Rachelly Roggel of Israel, the current owner, marvels that a hundred years ago, in 1905, in a town that is ten thousand miles away from where she currently lives, the names of approximately five hundred residents of that small town were listed on this large quilt top. There are 42 blocks, the names placed in ten different kinds of settings on this textile that
measures 75" x 68."
In the hope of finding some information about the people named on the top, Roggel contacted Dominick Reisen of the Historical Association of Middlefield, New York, author of two books on town history. Middlefield: Otsego Lake's Eastern Shore (Arcadia Publishing, July 2005), part of the Images of America series, tells the story of the town through 200 photographs and detailed captions.
Reisen's second book, Inscriptions from the Middlefield Baptist Cemetery, is a book that concentrates on the town's historical events at the turn of the nineteenth to twentieth century.
Both of Reisen's books are available from the Middlefield Historical Society, telephone:
(607) 547-4008.
When he was provided with names from several of the blocks on the Roggel quilt top, Reisen was able to match tombstones with some of them. Seven of these individuals are buried in the Middlefield Baptist Cemetery:
Harrison Brown: the family has lived in the town since the early nineteenth century.
Eva Burnum: the family has lived in town since at least the 1820s.
L.A. Cossaart: L is for Lamore - 1847-1935.
Jane Ann North: 1834-1920, the North family has been in Middlefield since before the American Revolution.
Mary Parshall: the family has lived in the town since the early nineteenth century.
Birdsall Tabor: the family has lived in Middlefield since at least the 1820s.
Cora Thompson: born in 1876; married into the North family.
More work needs to be done to uncover the mysteries that the quilt top holds. Roggel who is a busy homemaker, mother and wife, playwright, and quilt artist, is committed to uncovering more information about the signature quilt top, as time permits.
Tracking Down Names on Signature Quilts
Historians often utilize various public records to find out information about people who lived in the past. Good sources are: Wills, Inventories, Census Records, Birth and Death Certificates, Copies of Military Draft Cards, Old Driver's licenses, Published Obituaries, Probate Court Records, Land Deeds, and Church Records. In addition, sometimes helpful are Records of Genealogy kept in Famly Bibles, and Genealogy Searches online and through records repositories such as the Church of the Latter Day Saints (Mormons.) If a person lived in recent times, then information can sometimes be learned by conducting oral interviews with family members and friends.
Redwork Signature Quilts of the nineteenth century were often made for church fundraisers. There were various ways to configure signatures on a quilt. In some instances, the names are embroidered like spokes of a wheel. More often than not, community members would pay a dime or a quarter to have their name included in a signature quilt. Businesses would be expected to pay more. As in the case of the Roggel top, all of the embroidered names were embroidered by the same person.
The main question that we would wonder about any Signature Quilt would be, "Why was it made?" With a date clearly embroidered on the surface, any researcher might have a head start in finding out the answer to that question.
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