A 1682 Quilt In Alabama #1: The Oldest American Quilt?

 

"Oldest known quilt in the Western World"

Textile history is not a case of oldest, first, only, etc.

Let sportscasters spout competitive statistics.

Checking "facts" like "the oldest American-made quilt" is often a piece of cake. It's too easy to debunk such competitive stories. Ten years ago we had a lot of fun with an Ebay post of the piece above, the "Oldest Known Quilt in Western World, with a buy-it-now price of  $3,200,000.

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/06/oldest-known-quilt-reduced-by-millions.html

Well, sometimes it's not a piece of cake, it's more like arugula soup; you hate to serve up a bitter concoction, but.....

Here we have a 45" wide fragment of a whole cloth bedcover allegedly cut from the oldest quilt made in what would become the United States, allegedly made in Boston by Sarah Kemble Knight. It's not date-inscribed but the caption lists an estimated date of 1682. We also read that it's silk with a wool batting. Is this the back or the front? The other side looks to be dark blue.

A statement touting the country's oldest quilt in 1915 in the middle of the Colonial Revival slant on American history would have raised doubts in only a few skeptics who might have taken the Colonial attribution with a grain of salt. A statement like that in 2020 raises many eyebrows. 

The quilted fragment is in the collection of an Alabama historic home in Greensboro.

... pictured in the new book Alabama Quilts: Wilderness Through World War II: 1682 - 1950, mentioned in the book's subtitle.

Read a preview here about the quilt in question.

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Alabama_Quilts/HQECEAAAQBAJ?hl=en&gbpv=1&dq=sarah+prout+chritophers+quilt&pg=PT61&printsec=frontcover

Magnolia Grove about 1940

Library of Congress

Alabama Historical Commission Property since 1980

An obvious fact:

That quilt looks exactly like bedcovers being made in the former colonies from the mid-18th century through about 1840---at least a century later than the caption.

Spencer Museum, University of Kansas

The Spencer Museum of Art where I volunteer to help with

the quilt collection has a beautiful example of a similar whole

cloth quilt based on a medallion format with florals and feathers.

It's wool rather than silk, estimated date 1775-1820.

The images are not stuffed but pop out due to diagonal lines of quilting, filler quilting. Sallie Casey Thayer, who shopped in New England in the early 20th-century, donated her collections to the University of Kansas.

 Collection of Independence Hall

Whole cloth, silk quilt with names of Philadelphia Quakers 

Hannah Callender, Sarah Smith and Catherine Smith and a date of 1761

American quilts from 1750 or later of silk and wool are found in many museums, particularly in New England.

Whole Cloth Quilt signed and dated Betsey Payne, 1808

Connecticut Historical Society.

This quilt dated in the middle of the fashion for such elegant wholecloth quilting is not silk but a fine wool that is polished to a shine to imitate more expensive fabric.

Detail of a pale blue silk quilted petticoat

associated with Abigail Smith Adams (1744-1818), 

wife of President John Adams. Peabody Essex Museum

The bedcovers are linked to extremely fashionable underskirts of the 18th century with similar imagery of feathers and tulip-shaped florals.

The "1682" quilt

An anachronism

Lynne Bassett's drawing of a wholecloth quilt, estimated date 1800, 

Molly Howard (1773-1852)

We're not going to spend much time here on style and fabric in the purported 1682 quilt, although we could see many similar examples with enough provenance and style to date them from about 1750-1850. Lynne Z. Bassett is the expert on the style. 

She has commented on our QuiltHistorySouth Facebook page:

"The 1682 quilt in the Alabama book attributed to Sarah Kemble Knight is clearly very old, and without examining it in person I can't say for sure if it could be what it's purported to be----but after studying New England's early whole-cloth wool quilts for more than 20 years, from the design I would say that it dates no earlier than the mid-18th century...[likely] the second quarter of the 19th century."

Pepper Cory agreed with her:

"I've seen several New England or New York wholecloth [quilts] from this period and that large tulip-Like central motif was popular then. Michigan State University has a beautiful indigo wholecloth with the tulip central motif. I am thinking the possible dates on the Alabama wholecloth ought to be 1820s-40s."

Read Lynne Z. Bassett's chapters in the book Massachusetts Quilts: Our Common Wealth in a preview:

https://www.google.com/books/edition/Massachusetts_Quilts/quNEcnPiM1cC?hl=en&gbpv=1&bsq=chelmsford

This story gets so complex it's going to take all week to tell it. 

Next Post: How a New England quilt wound up in Alabama.

Whole Top Quilt Patterns in the New Encyclopedia

 

Star of France, collection of the American Museum of Folk Art

If you had the old editions of my Encyclopedia of Pieced Quilt Patterns you could find

the name of this quilt pattern designed by Hubert VerMerhren about 1933.

#4000 Star of France

But it wasn't a very pretty drawing. These patterns designed

to fill the whole quilt are neither easy to make nor easy to draw.

VerMehren was good at the drafting.

However, my page proof of the third edition show a much

better drawing (Thanks, Ann & Jenny!)

In fact all the Whole-Top designs are nicely drafted now.

In color and outline.

Many of the patterns on the pages at the end of the book are

VerMehren designs from his DesMoines studio. He called

this one the D.A.R. Quilt #4002

4014 The Sunburst Quilt

4015 The Giant Dahlia

The pattern for the Giant Dahlia appeared in

newspapers in 1934 & 1935

All good to know.

80" x 80"

In case you should come across one of these at a yard

sale....

End of the Year Giving-Quilt Research Collection

Ellen Wallace Sharples miniature painting on ivory

Time to think about end-of-the-year giving.

And here is where I just sent my money:

You might want to support the Quilt Research Center at the

University of Nebraska Libraries.

International Quilt Museum, Lincoln, Nebraska

The University of Nebraska is the world center for quilt history with two major collecting locations and focuses. The International Quilt Museum collects and displays quilts and related textiles in an impressive building adjacent to the campus.

The University of Nebraska Libraries collects quilt related archives in the Special Collections building called the Quilt Research Center.

Quite impressive storage and retrieval stacks.

Read more about it at this post:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2018/12/quilt-research-collection-at-university.html

As me and my friend Merikay Waldvogel (and many others) have been donating our quilt history files and personal archives to the Library we think you should send a check to the Quilt Research Center.

Donating by Check

Make checks to University of Nebraska Foundation with the notation:

Quilt Research Collection Fund #01147420

Mail donations to:

University of Nebraska Foundation
1010 Lincoln Mall, Suite 300
Lincoln, NE 68508

Donating Online

Click here:

https://secure.nufoundation.org/give?fundid=01147420

The page should look like this.

Questions about financial donations: Contact Joye Fehringer at the Foundation.
402-458-1187
[email protected]

Questions about the Quilt Research Collections: Contact Mary Ellen Ducey at the library. 
402-472-5076 
[email protected]

An Eagle May Be Trying to Tell Us Something

Eagle from a sampler quilt dated 1851

Pook & Pook auction

Fans of patriotic quilts are quite familiar with this eagle design, which appears in quilts from about 1840 through the early twentieth century.

Spread eagle, sometimes with two stars, often with a banner.

Usually holds olive branches and arrows in the claws

(although this one is missing the olive branches.)

The stars tend to be rather free-form, looking to have been made with a slash and cut method.
You start with a circle and make 8 slashes and turn under the edges

In some below the circle hasn't been slashed.

1940 watercolor of an old sampler

1856 sampler, collection of Barb Vedder

All peace and love, from a sampler at a Skinner auction

The pattern was particularly popular about 1880-1920

in Ohio sampler/albums. This Ohio quiltmaker (not

good with points) created a four pointed star.

I've considered the meaning of the design over the years especially in the context of antebellum America and the other day came across this image that is very interesting:

Spread eagle with arrows and olive branches and two six pointed stars.

It's a brass button with a shank back, one of two created for the

Cold Water Army, a cultural phenomenon of the 1840s.

Buttons possibly by the Scovill Company of Waterbury,

Connecticut, which created many brass buttons for

military uniforms---for militias of the 1840s to

Civil War regiments.

This button from a New Hampshire militia shows their logo,

an important image to martial men.

And to boys who wanted to be martial men.

The Cold Water Army with its eagle buttons appealed not

to adult volunteers in local military companies but to children....

Cold Water Army of boys in uniform---did those short

jackets sport brass buttons?

who were encouraged to swear against alcohol at a young age

and show their temperance affiliations in ceremonies and parades.

Girls reading the Cold Water Army periodical

Marching Songs

Did girls collect buttons too?

Maybe for charm strings.

The Cold Water Army was definitely marketed (as we'd say) to children.

Collecting white ribbons, brass buttons and tokens would be fun and

appealed to their need to belong.

Mottoes were many:

"That's the Drink for Me"

referring to cold water.

Token, punched so it could be worn on a string

"So here we pledge perpetual hate

To all that can intoxicate."

Historic New England collection

One signed a pledge, which could be framed.

The founder of the Cold Water Army was Thomas Hunt, who published a book by that name.
The Cold Water Army was part polemic and part how-to book. Here's how to offer an alternate Independence Day celebration without alcohol.

With perhaps white ribbons for participants who marched

to this march sung to the tune of Yankee Doodle

Newspaper written for children first published in Massachusetts, 1841.

In 1842 they counted 1,500 subscribers.

There was also a Cold Water Girl and a Cold Water Boy 

publication but no issues seem to have survived.

 

Although long forgotten the Cold Water Army was important in the 1840s and probably into the 1850s.

Which brings us back to the question.

Dated 1855, no stars

Auction

Are these eagles seen in the Pennsylvania/Maryland area

in the 1850s telling us of a temperance affiliation,

or the hope that a man might live a sober life?

Dated 1856 , collection of Barb Vedder

WPA water color by painter Charlotte Angus

Sampler quilt dated 1851

Pook & Pook auction

Here's an alternate view of mid-19th century symbolism:

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2018/03/eagles-quilts-2-quarrelsome-eagles.html

It's too bad we have so little idea what the imagery meant at the time.