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Do you want to make a quilt? There more to them than thread and fabric. For women quilting together was socialability as well the practical aspect. Life through frontier days, even Victorian times was lonely, boring, unrelenting hard work so sitting around a quilt frame, exchanging news and nuisances was a way to get through the long months which could drag on and on. Listening to the voices of family and friends come to "set together" a quilt was a healing mantra which soothed the jangled nerves. There was no easy communication Back When, perhaps only a spavined horse without a saddle and whose backbone struck an additional hard chord as one made their way to the "quilting bee." Women didn't travel far or often. A quilt was a magic carpet and in it, if it could talk, would tell tales stitched in it, needle up, needle down, as a record of Days Gone By.
Ever think of a quilt as a diary? There were many reasons for making a Signature Quilt like the one pictured here. They might also be called Friendship, Autograph or Album quilts, according to the part of the nation you lived, all were diaries of time and place for some special purpose ... Gift to the minister's wife, a quilter's daughter getting married, or about to move out West ... Sign a block, date it and its a remembrance. This particular journal in printed cotton is local according to the places and names picked out with much time and patience. The dates cover the 1880s and the writing in India ink is much faded. (Sometimes names were embroidered). But it is not known what the common denominator was ... A church group, a family, classmates of somekind, parents at a school? The places were among the earliest of settlements which had their own unique "news of the day," not just when Sarah's baby was due, was jacob making eyes at Sophronia or Ida was getting above herself, forgetting that, after all, she was related to the Daves. Each stitch could be another bit of gossip or rumor or fact. If only a quilt could talk this one could tell you what went on at Mill Ville which Clara Bolt had pieced. The Ville was noted also as Cut Throat's Den and where also was located Rattlesnake Den and Wildcat Gulch with a stream leading into Apple River Canyon known as Hell's Branch. It was none too civilized with such gangs; yes, gangs, as the Burbridges, the Faiths and the most notorious of them all, the Daves who invented the word mishcief. Only when the Frink and Walker stage line had an inn there and the post office came did some social order arrive. The real taming influence were the periodic floods which wiped away the huts and hovels and the cholera which took dozens of lives ... One mass grave is said to have harbored fifty-two victims alone. Who'd guess it now? This "Economy Patch," as it might be called in some places has that one time well known place once named Yello Creek which in the beginning was called "Andrew's Mill" among other. Here among the patches of pinks, rose, blues, green, tan and brown with sash work in black or dark blue, is the Hagan girls contribution. The county history says that neither Andrews Mill or Yellow Creek "amounted to much up there in the northern reaches to Loran Township." They had to wait for a railroad which didn't come through until the '90s. Its predecessor downstream a mile or so, Mill Grove, waited and waited. It had been founded in 1836 by William Kirkpatrick who was with a "company" in which Freeport's founder, Tut Baker was a member. They needed a millsite to turn timber into lumber to build up the county-seat-to-be. That part worked but a railroad by-passed it some miles away and it dwindled and died a disease-ridden death, too. Yellow Creek changed its name, meanwhile, to Pearl City when the lustrous gems were found in the creek to cause a Pearl Rush as well as a Gold Rush, its history being as romantic as the Old West but for a shorter time.
All those stitched on patches with their inked-on names have had a history mutual of one another, woven and basted, arranged in a loose but practical pattern but which also included such places as Kansas, Wisconsin, Fern (?), Blooming Grove (?), Dakota and Babb's Grove; the latter two other Stephenson County sites we do know, too, and which held the coverlet quilt story together in a neat manner. The Berreman patches could be in any color because those folks were from a variety of places. Sixteen families banded together to build the most necessary structure of all ... A Union School and Church1868. They hired two German immigrants new to the neighborhood but who walked twelve miles each way to build the solid stone building which survives to this day, much remodeled for what uses its been put to since. The stone masons, as said, were tyros to America's natural history. The black and white kitty, they learned, did not want to be picked up and its odor clung for days afterward. It wasn't a pet. It was a skunk. Was it inspiration for the blacks and whites in the quilt or at least the name of the road the Union building is on ... Skunk Hollow? Berreman was first spelled Berryman for a freind of the township supervisor and its history, it's said, is closely linked to that of "next door" Pleasant Valley, the best label any place could ever have. To bring a Signature Quilt into being there were other places such as Black Oak, Carroll County and Loran, Stephenson County, a few others, all of which varied in the individualstic way American settlement was made ... Each place different in some way from another. Ain't it grand? The following, in part, is taken from "Quilts in a Material World" by Linda Eaton, a Christmas 2007 gift from Daughter #1. It suggests many other facets of what a quilt could do as a journal, the energy it produces by the "setting together" of patches and people ... "The Mid-Atlantic region is credited with originating the fad for Signature quilts that was strongest between 1840-1860. The majority that have survived were made from printed cottons, with the distinctive turkey red print being most popular ... Historians have noted the importance of familial erelationships to Quaker business practices. An overt yet unspoken practice. Kinship was an integral part of the social network that informed the lives of men and women in the past as well as today. For men, family networks could provide access to financial credit, contacts with overseas merchants, political strategies to control local or even national government offices, paths to successful careers and access to education opportunities. No less important for women, family relationships often influenced membership in benevolent societies and even recognized as a major factor in determining who attended the Seneca Falls Women's Rights Convention, 1848 (!!!!) ... Associations of people through the religious beliefs be they Quaker meetings, churches, synagogues, were an important aspect of many women's lives and continue to be so today. Many of Baltimore's elaborate album and presentation's quilts are linked to the Methodist movement, one of the fastest growing Evangelistical sects in the period of heightened religious fervor known as the Second Great Awakening. Where their origins and intentions are known, all the quilts featuring a Bible in one block were made for Methodist ministers or class leaders, although the converse is not true." Although the present possessor of this Signature quilt names it that, it could clearly be a Friendship quilt because it brought, is bringing people together.
Barbara Woodford, shown here with the charming, cheerful quilt has studied and made quilts an interesting business venture for more than twelve years. She found this quilt in Carroll County and contacted PDQ Me because of the several familiar place names, neighbors among us. We are grateful to Barbara for the opportunity to get to meet her and learn of her love of quilts because of their deep meaning for women, past and present. If you are seriously interested, SERIOUSLY, you may call her at her Hanover, Galena phone, 815-777-2009 or go to her website at www.historic-american.com. History comes in many forms, doesn't it? Sometimes it is stitched into the fabric of our lives in a variety of ways. Thanks again Barbara.
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