Belvy

Circa 1900 : Luther Hinton Saunders, Stephen Decater Saunders, Belvadier Walker Saunders, (on her lap) John B. Carl Saunders, Clarence Steve Saunders, girls: May Etta Saunders & Berti Florence Saunders. From the Honnoll family genealogy site. 

"WALKER NAME MEANING
English (especially Yorkshire) and Scottish: occupational name for a fuller, Middle Englishwalkere, Old English wealcere, an agent derivative ofwealcan ‘to walk, tread’." 

Today in family history (an ongoing series)

Today was another day of freezing fog and hidden ice patches everywhere. The landscape is closing down for winter, but it feels like winter has made it here early yet again. It’s a time to light fires and look for the first sign that the days are starting to lengthen again.

No one in the immediate line was up to much on Dec. 12, but Dec. 13 brings us to a heartbreaker.

13 Dec 1901: Belvadier Walker Saunders dies in Altus, Oklahoma, at the age of 29, 10 days after being gored by a bull. She was part of the Walker exodus from Itawamba, Mississippi, via Arkansas to Altus. This was a one-way trip with wagons—not romantic prairie schooners, but utilitarian wagons carrying whole households. Generally the people walked. And walked. The quilt I now have made this trip in one of those wagons.

Belvy was the oldest child in the family; my great-grandmother Mossie was the second child, and the infamous Clovis was the youngest. There were 7 others, a total of 9. The youngest 3 were not born in Mississippi, so the trek must have started after 1884 but before 1887. In 1884, Belvy would have been 12. In 1892, at the age of 19, not quite 20, she married Stephen Decatur Saunders in Altus and started what would become a family of 5 children.

She doesn’t look as if life was easy in any way. Altus was a frontier town then, and Oklahoma was not yet a state (that would not happen until 1907). They were homesteaders, farmers, not ranchers, and the enmity between the two groups was fierce. Belvy looks as if she could tackle anything and do everything except smile. I hope that is nothing more than an artifact of the photograph pose.

I cannot find where she is buried. She is not listed in Victory Cemetery at the geometrically straight crossroads outside Altus, as are her parents and some of her siblings. And cousins. And in-laws. There are 730 people here and I may be related to them all, as was Belvy, at least once. 

Stephen remarried, and raised 3 more children with Lillie Brisbin, whose brother Henry—keep up, now—married Belvy’s little sister Mittie Florence Walker. I am working out some complex descendancies here. It was an outpost town, with relatively few families but lots of children in those families. Mossie married Newt Brooks, and George Aster Walker married Nettie Melinda Brooks—siblings marrying siblings. Oddly, Nettie also died at the age of 29, leaving 5 children.

I don’t have any pictures of my great-grandmother at 29, but I suspect that she and Belvy faced the world with that same expression.  They could run a homestead, build a half-dugout, and carve out a living on a dry and trackless frontier. They took their Methodism straight and walked roads we would not be able to see today. In the end, the dangers of their world--livestock for one, a tornado for another--were too much. I have lit a candle for Belvy today. It's too cold without one. 

The 130-year-old quilt

Women's History Month challenge for March 8 — Did one of your female ancestors leave a diary, journal, or collection of letters? Share an entry or excerpt.

Quilt made by Nancy Ellinor Honnoll Walker and Mary Marcella Walker Brooks in Mississippi, 1881.

Do I ever wish that they had. I have so many questions now. But maybe this will serve in the place of a journal. Sometimes we get messages from the older girls in forms other than writing. Sometimes. This is one of those times. This story is about an heirloom that is also a record.

I posted about this quilt last year. Here's the rest of the story.

After my grandmother died in 1994, Shirley called me to say that there was something special for each of the grandchildren, something Grandmother particularly wanted us to have. With a slight catch in her voice, Shirley said that Grandmother wanted me to have THE quilt.

"What THE quilt?" I wanted to know. "There are lots of quilts she gave us."

"No," Shirley said, "THE quilt. I didn't even know about it until she told me."

Grandmother had rescued the quilt after a devastating tornado struck her family farm in 1957, destroyed the farmhouse and fatally injured Mossie. She also rescued pages from the family Bible that were scattered in the mud. The quilt was cleaned and put up away from everyone for the rest of Grandmother's life.

It is a slightly tattered beauty with the name "Mossie" and the date 1881 embroidered in one of its panels, and the name alone embroidered in another. We assumed that this was made for Mossie by her mother.

In 2003, I started researching it so that we could get it on the Quilt Index. There aren't that many quilts with such a clear and provable date and place of origin, after all. At that time I knew nothing about my great-grandmother's family except that her mother was a shadowy figure named Gramma Walker. And that didn't get me very far in the genealogy.

With a little digging, I uncovered the Honnoll family, and Gramma Walker turned out to be Nancy Ellinor Honnoll Walker, whose name was spelled exactly that way in the pages of the family Bible that Grandmother rescued after the storm.

I also realized that Mossie was born in 1874. By 1881 she would have been old enough to start learning sewing and cooking. I can't prove it, but I am betting anything that this was her first project, with her mother's help where needed. I believe that her mother drew the name and date and that Mossie embroidered them, carefully. It's what my mother did for my first embroidery project. Needlework does run in the family.

Name and date block

Name block. Look at that handwriting.

Tornado damage on the back.

Certainly this quilt was of supreme importance to Mossie. In a life filled with some serious hard times and many cross-country moves, it was one thing she never lost.

She didn't write down much, ever, not even recipes, but this quilt is a record and a message in itself.

P.S. When Shirley came up to Delaware for our wedding, she asked me quietly if I still had the Mossie quilt, since she didn't see it anywhere. As casually as I could, I told her that it was put up somewhere. It was. It was put up hanging in the chapel for our wedding the next day. The look on her fact when she saw it there, brilliant and perfect for an October day, is one of the best memories I have in my whole life. It was the day before Mossie's birthday, which I did not realize. Sometimes everything comes together.

Sallie, Myra and Cinderella

Women's History Month challenge for March 3: Do you share a first name with one of your female ancestors? Perhaps you were named for your great-grandmother, or your name follows a particular naming pattern. If not, then list the most unique or unusual female first name you’ve come across in your family tree.

Mack Johnson with his sister Harriet Johnson Hardcastle in Whitewright, Texas, standing in for his sister Sallie, of whom I do not seem to have a photo. Ca. 1985.

That's several questions, there.

I am a Sally, which is supposed to be a diminutive of Sarah but in my case is not. Just Sally. I am almost but not quite named the same as my mother: she is Shirley Yvonne, I am Sally Yvonne. Both my mother and her brother received lovely romantic names, possibly inspired by my great-aunt Coy, a lover of novels. My uncle was Guinn Selwyn, which was undoubtedly a bit much when he was growing up. We knew him as Uncle Johnny. We know her as Shirley.

Shirley was supposed to have been called Yvonne, but that faded out by her third year. There is a Double Wedding Ring quilt made for her as a baby which has the name Yvonne and the date embroidered on it. If she sends a photo of the quilt, I'll post it. There are no other Shirleys or Yvonnes in the family that I can find, and Yvonne may have been a bit much for Oklahoma and West Texas. She and I carry the name in the family.

There is another Sally, actually a Sallie, and she was one of my grandfather Mack's four older sisters: Nancy, Samantha, Harriet and Sallie, not necessarily in that order. Sallie Johnson Plemmons was a lovely lady. As did so many other people, she and her husband moved to California during the Depression and settled in San Diego. I re-met her when I moved there in 1994. She passed away just shy of her 99th birthday, and her family held a reunion on what would have been her 100th birthday. Sallie seemed to know who I was after all those years, and gave me a ceramic rose a few days later. I still have it. Her brother, my grandfather, had been gone for several years at that point.

Sallie and her siblings were the children of Elmyra "Myra" Elizabeth Wacaster Johnson, Dr. John Johnson's second wife and from all accounts a merry and devout little soul. Sallie was the same, and her family adored her. They still do.

As for unique female names in the family tree: when I was researching the quilt I have (the subject of a later post), I discovered my connections to the Honnoll family. My great-great-grandmother was Nancy Ellinor Honnoll Walker (the Ellinor spelling comes from the family Bible, so no trying to correct it). Her father, Peter, the beekeeper, had a sister named Cinderella Lucinda Honnoll. I respectfully submit that as our entry in the Unique Female Name Sweepstakes. She was born in Tennessee in 1815 and died before she was 30. I have found no images of her anywhere. They may not exist.

To Sallie, Myra and Cinderella Lucinda.

Family recipe Monday: comfort foods

Small quilt in honor of a big anniversary

It's been an odd couple of weeks, with days of high activity interspersed with a few quiet moments. I really am not ready for the holidays to be upon us, but, like everyone else, I am ready for the end of the semester. Just wish that we could have a couple of months of paid leave before the next semester starts. Since no one asked me, however, I'll make do with a couple of weeks off. I have a pile of quilting and sewing projects, some of which are badly overdue, to work on.

Next month is an important anniversary for a group that is very dear to me, and that I miss out here in Dakota Territory. Quilts for Comfort is celebrating its 10th year of providing quilts for those in need in the Delaware area. Its founder, Edna Kotrola, organized hundreds of bees (with potluck lunches) and thousands of volunteer workers in the effort. They claim that 7284 quilts have been delivered to at-risk children in Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and Maryland, as well as to adults receiving dialysis and cancer care in Delaware. I helped with about 50 of these, starting literally the day before I had major surgery myself and needed something calming to do with my mother, who was up to help. We went to a bee in Newark, DE, and I was hooked. And calmed. And the surgery went very well.

Edna gave me the last quilt I worked on with her when I moved out here, as a surprise gift. It was and is indeed a comfort. I miss the bees and am looking for a local equivalent, but it won't be quite the same. I decided to do some quilting for the anniversary.

So I dragged out the fabric stash (which needed reorganizing anyway) and my grandmother's Singer Featherweight (which I only use for quilt piecing, because it is the best machine ever) and took a square from each of 48 different fabrics. I wanted it to be colorful and cheerful for the person who receives it, and reasonably well-made so that Edna does not think she wasted her time on me. If you are looking for a cause to support, you couldn't do better than hers.

It's the right time of year for thinking about warmth and comfort. Here are a couple of classics which I would take to a quilting bee potluck.

Meatloaf

1 ½ lb. ground beef
1 ½ tsp salt
1 cup fresh bread crumbs or oats
¼ tsp pepper
1 beaten egg
½ can tomato sauce
1 medium sized onion, chopped

Lightly mix ingredients and form a loaf. Place in shallow pan in moderate (350* F) oven. While it is starting to bake, combine the following to make a tart-sweet sauce:

½ can tomato sauce
2 T brown sugar or molasses
2 T vinegar
1 cup water
2 T prepared mustard

Pour over meatloaf in oven. Continue baking for 1 ½ hours, basting occasionally.
--Vada Brooks Johnson

Note: Shirley never uses the fresh breadcrumbs, but always uses the oats and adds bell pepper.

For this next one, I would only use corn tortillas. It could also be made with chicken instead of ground beef. I would use a good white cheese instead of Velveeta, personally. This recipe can be adapted easily and enlarged to make enough for a whole roomful of busy, hungry quilters. It can be prepared in advance and reheated beautifully--that is, if you didn't use Velveeta.

Green chili enchiladas

Brown 1 lb. meat with small chopped onion--add 8 oz grated longhorn cheese and simmer. In double boiler, heat 1 can cream of chicken soup, 1 can chopped green chilis, 1 small jar chopped pimientos, 1 small can evaporated milk, and 8 oz Velveeta cheese. Heat until cheese is melted. Roll meat mixture in tortillas. Place in pan and pour green chili mixture over enchiladas. Cover with foil and cook at 400* F until mixture is bubbly.
--Vada Brooks Johnson


Happy Monday. Go make someone happy today.

A few scenes from the summer of 2010

Things that somehow never got posted throughout the summer....

Grebes at their floating nest on Seavey Lake.

Yes, I did say "floating."

And, yes, I did say "nest." This was in early July: the grebelets have hatched and grown quickly since then.

 

Hexagon quilt from the Rapid City quilt guild show. To put it in perspective: this is a miniature quilt, 1' square. You can see how tiny the hexagons are. Feel like an amateur yet? I do.... 

Butterflies swarming Gene's chair at Iron Creek campground. There were dozens of them on him and the chair all day.

Hotel sign in Custer.

Mountain bluebird at Iron Creek.

Nice pose.

Brewster in his low-life T-shirt. He was being treated for a minor skin problem, and this helped keep him from scratching it. It also lowered his IQ, never impressive in the first place, by 20 points or so.

Barn quilts: two favorite things merged

Barn quilt beauty posted at the Barn Quilts of Sac County site

Is it Saturday already? I'm not at all sure how that happened. We have started the move into the new building, and things are beyond hectic. Hecticity? Hecticness? There has to be a word for it. Let's just say that you can have the irresistible force (a 3-ton hoist) meet the immovable object (a fossil block the size of a Harley, still in its plaster field jacket). Winner: neither. Draw. The hoist could lift the block, but could not move it forward. We moved over 60 field jackets into the new building in the past two days and seem to be on track to finish the project on Monday, with one notable exception: a fossil block the size of a Volkswagen Beetle, slightly flattened. Look for details from the survivors sometime next week, when we are out of traction.

It will be a long summer of moving, and I'll post highlights on the weekends.

In the meantime, how come no one ever told me about the Midwest gems known as barn quilts? Quilts painted on wood and attached to barns and other such structures! Now I have a new reason (as if I needed one) to stop without warning in the middle of rural roads, tick off farm equipment operators and scare the cattle. The Kansas City Star Quilts team has posted a tribute here. This sent me to an Internet search, in which I found out that many places, including the relatively close-by rivals Sac County, Washington County and Humboldt County, Iowa, have a major presence in this field. Architecture of the open places, meet painted quilts.

I think I'm in love. Now I have to find out if these cross the Missouri and make it to West River, South Dakota.

Barn quilt posted by Mary Howell of Lebanon, Tennessee, at the KC Star Pickledish site

That was the week that was

"Hexagon patchwork from about 1830 with the papers and the basting still in them." From Barbara Brackman's site at http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2010/03/hexagons-again.html.

I'm not sure what happened. It was Monday, then it was Sunday, and everything in between is a frenetic blur. April on a college campus always seems to be a time for meetings, tests, defenses, weddings and other pivotal life events, both for the students and for all of us working with them. Spring arrives and life changes forever. In one week, I've watched my students repeat vows, deliver papers at a professional meeting, and prepare for the final steps in getting advanced degrees. They are moving forward in scholarship and in life simultaneously, marking the milestones. There is much more of the same ahead for the rest of the month. Emotions are running at fever pitch.

Does that mean that there are more celebratory/commemorative quilting projects afoot here? Does it ever....more on that in a later post.

The new building is nearly ready for the final walk-through before it becomes ours. After that, we will be moving collections, library resources, archives and lab equipment in all during the summer, trying to have everything in the best shape possible for a grand fall opening. It's not a theoretical move any more. Once again, I will be triaging and moving my own office, sooner rather than later. Emotions are running high on this front, too. Couldn't I have collected something less painful to move than hundreds of books? Origami, perhaps? (Answer: a resounding no.)

So, im lieu of what should have been Quilt Thursday, here's a link to a followup on hexagon quilts that Barbara Brackman has posted. It's great eye candy for a lovely Sunday. Take a moment to savor the day; I will do so, too.

Quilt Thursday: On the road yet again

Log Cabin quilt, Barn Raising variation, as featured on Barbara Brackman's Material Culture blog.

It's late March, so it must be time to head back to the Platte River for the annual official crane-watching trip. Last week's trip was an unexpected preview; this one will be more in-depth. Last year this trip was a no-go, game called on account of blizzard, four weekends in a row. This year, we are cautiously optimistic that the trip is a go, so Gene is awash in maps and notes plotting this out. I'll file a wildlife report when we return on Sunday. Based on the racket we are hearing around the house from bluejays and flickers and other avian members of the orchestra, spring is in full swing up here. Next weekend is yet another trip to Nebraska, the western side, after which I think we get citizenship in the state. Or something.

In the meantime, feast your eyes and your inner historian on Barbara Brackman's post on Log Cabin quilts, "Log Cabin--How Old is the Name?," at her site. The Log Cabin in all of its variations may be one of the oldest quilt blocks named, according to her research, and is an ancient pattern. I'm particularly fascinated with her discussion of the same pattern in Egyptian animal mummy wraps.

Happy Thursday.

Quilt Thursday: bees and quilts, or synchronicity strikes again

The Honey Bee quilt block from the Kansas City Star collection, originally published in 1929.

Our family genealogy work, as I mentioned before, started in earnest with my need to document an 1881 quilt. That led to the discovery of our connections to the Honnoll family. And that led to the discovery (thank you again, Bill!) of the unsuspected beekeepers in the family. Which in turn explained some of the older family recipes made with generous amounts of honey instead of sugar. Everything is connected; not for nothing is this blog called Threads and Traces.

So imagine my astonishment and delight to see today's Kansas City Star blog post entitled "Bees and Their Quilts." This is not just about quilting bees...it seems that quilts are actually part of the construction of some beehives. No matter which angle you take, you cannot separate bees and quilts.

Publisher Doug Weaver elaborates:
"A friend...is exploring the world of beekeeping. She recently shared some photos of her and her friends building beehives. And she mentioned that the Warre Hive style of beehive includes a quilt frame that sits toward the top of the hive, under the roof. ...The frame, with fabric attached at the bottom, is eventually filled with insulation – straw, sawdust, peat, wood shavings, etc. The quilt 'absorbs the hive's moisture more easily and communicates to the hive the heat outside,' wrote Emile Warre, the Frenchman who developed the hive design in the early 1900s.

"Warre called the design the 'People’s Hive' because of its simplicity. (All of his thinking is detailed in his book, 'Beekeeping for All.' I like Warre … clearly a man of the people and, like the bee itself, a lover of community, it appears.)

"Granted, this beehive quilt isn’t the kind of quilt you and I know and love. It’s basically a piece of plain cloth, attached to the frame....Still, there’s something comforting in knowing that, as we put honey on a biscuit, quilts might have contributed to that sweet combination."

A Warre hive with the "quilt" layer labelled, from http://thebeespace.net/warre-hive/.  

Weaver goes on to provide a link to an entertaining history of quilting bees and to compare quilting bee and beehive dynamics. There are many points in common; quilting bees were social microcosms of the larger community.

This line especially resonated with me:
"In isolated regions gathering women in the area together helped overcome the loneliness that so many pioneer women experienced. Often these women often didn't have a big house with a parlor for hand quilting."

So true. Every hand-stitched quilt is a collection of memories, often of friends and family coming together on rare and cherished occasions. I wish I knew more of the story of the 1881 quilt, but I can't imagine that it was anything other than a mother and daughter project, and that made the quilt so precious to my great-grandmother that she kept it close by her for her entire life. If you'll excuse me, I need to go touch it now and wonder.

Happy Thursday.

To make a prairie it takes a clover and one bee,—
One clover, and a bee,
And revery.
The revery alone will do
If bees are few.

--Emily Dickinson (1830–86)
 

Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative

I'd like to use today's post to get the word out about the Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative Silent Auction that Ami Simms is running. Here is the information from her site:

"The Alzheimer's Art Quilt Initiative (www.AlzQuilts.org) is a national, grassroots charity whose mission is to raise awareness and fund research. The AAQI auctions and sells donated quilts, and sponsors a nationally touring exhibit of quilts about Alzheimer's. The AAQI has raised more than $379,000 since January 2006."

Read more here.

For everyone who has lost loved ones to this disease, long before they passed away...especially those who had talents that were lost, stories you wish you had written down, smiles that became shadows...consider contributing to the AAQI cause. Take a look at the little art quilts, and consider putting in a bid on one of these tiny gems. Then go hug all your loved ones, mentally or physically, as tightly as you can.

End of public service message.

Quilt Thursday: Quilt of Quilts

It's another hectic Thursday, with everyone trying to get a zillion things done before spring break starts. For a number of people up here, that will actually be tomorrow, as travel and field trips start. I will not be going on these--I have another trip planned, but that doesn't start for a week or so. That means that I am pulling double duty on a few fronts, at least through the end of next week. So no coherent thoughts from up here just yet. I could use that cloning machine right about now, please.

Instead, I'd like to share a quilt post from an unexpected source: William the Coroner's Forensic Files.  I liked his comments: "The prevailing culture...seems to be to make hand machine quilting look as much like machine quilting as possible. I can understand these goals, these are the same sort of people that do intricate scale models." Or make the ultimate hexagon quilt.

Here is his favorite quilt from the Lake Farm Park Quilt Show. This is called "Quilt of Quilts," and Wiliam the Coroner calls it a "meta quilt show." The artist's name is not listed; if you know it, please let me know. Whoever you are, this is awesome.

Happy Thursday.

Quilt Thursday: Hexagons

Barbara Brackman has a terrific post today about hexagon quilts (e.g. the Grandmother's Flower Garden pattern). She describes how unexpectedly fascinating it is to make a large work with a simple, repeating, single-shape element. Hexagons fit and nest in ways that mathematicians can explain via tiling theory far better than I can. They crop up in the natural world again and again (honeycombs, snowflakes, basalt, etc.). They can be tiled indefinitely, infinitely.

In her post, she notes the astonishing hexagon quilts made by Albert Small of Ottawa, Illinois. This is found at the Illinois State Museum Society site. Mr. Small apparently was out to create a quilt with the largest number of individual pieces. I'm dedicating today's blog to him. That's only because I will NOT be following in his footsteps; I can practically guarantee this.

Here are the ISMS pictures of Mr. Small and two of his amazing hand-pieced quilts. As they note, in the second quilt below, the individual pieces are so tiny that six of them fit under a dime.

There are over 123,000 hexagon pieces in this quilt. I am now officially an amateur. For life.  

Happy Thursday. The weekend is almost here.

Quilts from the 1930s: the butterfly quilt

We all inherited quilts from my grandmother as we reached adulthood or a reasonable facsimile thereof, there being several of us in my generation who do not consider ourselves to be actual grown-ups even yet. Most of these quilts were made in the 1930s and 1940s, when my great-grandmother was alive and well and had her quilting frames available. These were rigged on a pulley system so that they could be stored at ceiling level when they were not in use. Gran Brooks pieced by hand or machine, appliqued by hand, and quilted exclusively by hand. I would kill for her set-up today.

The fabrics from the 1930s are classic and are now being reproduced. The prints are tiny conversation prints, and the colors are bright and clear. Quilting had zoomed in popularity during the Depression, as it has again in our tough times, and new processes made a wide range of colors and prints more available. Women's magazines and local newspapers, most famously the Kansas City Star, ran quilt block patterns for their subscribers, and many quilters faithfully clipped and kept these. More than one friend has mentioned that their mothers or grandmothers subscribed to these publications only for the quilt patterns. It was a joyous feature in a bleak time.

This butterfly quilt is a classic 30s applique pattern that may have been a Star pattern, although the only one I can find in the Star archives is pieced. It was a gift from my grandmother to our co-blogger Tartan Girl when she reached her semblance of adulthood, and had already suffered damage from being folded and stored too long. Some of the fabrics were very durable, some were faded, and some had simply disintegrated, victims of the cloth, the dye and time itself.

This was obviously a child's quilt, a quilt for a little girl. My mother can look at this quilt and identify her childhood dresses that went into it. This was a way of using and re-using precious fabric scraps, of making do with what was at hand. My grandmother, to the end of her life, disliked and distrusted quilts that were made wholly with fabric bought for that purpose. As she said at a quilt show, a bit tartly, "That isn't what quilts are supposed to be." So the butterflies are each unique, from different shirts and dresses, and they have aged in very different ways. Tartan Girl wants to fix the damage so that the quilt will continue to bring joy.

What we, the quilt women of the family, have decided to do is to replace the threadbare wings and bodies with reproduction fabric as close to the original as we can get, or guess, without removing any of the original work. The old butterflies that are too deteriorated to be repaired with careful silk thread work will be covered by new butterflies and embroidery. If anyone ever wants to study the quilt, they will find the original work under the new stitches. We will back the quilt with a new and sturdier backing, so that the old fabric is eased and protected.

Absolutely everyone I have consulted about this has offered the same words of wisdom, at first startling to museum people: use the quilt, joyfully, happily. Lay it on a bed, hang it carefully on a wall, but do not put it away in the dark to be forgotten. Use it. Quilts are made for warmth, sharing and comfort. These are a direct point of contact across four generations. The wear is part of the story.

I hope that we get back to this quilt this year and have it returned to its cheerful warmth for Tartan soon.

This post was approved by Mel Blanc, feline quilt line supervisor.

 And my mother thinks I should be a quilt appraiser when I grow up.

Look both ways before crossing

It's traditional at this time, the start of a new year and (arguably) new decade, to look both to the past for memories and inspiration and the future for hopes and dreams. As I enter the third year of prairie life, I am doing just that.

I have come almost full circle back to the Great Plains, 800+ miles nearly due north of the place I was born. The journey has taken me to both coasts after a sojourn in the Texas Hill Country. Museums and landscapes drew me across the country and refined my understanding and appreciation of places and people.

Why do I keep coming back to the prairie? Morning light. Horizons. Storms. Sandhill cranes. Killdeer. Prairie dogs. Silence. Sunsets. Finding my way back to a place I never really left.

I have worked in museums since the day I learned that it was possible to do so, and I would not change that decision even if I could. Whatever I might have brought to museums has been given back tenfold to me. This is not to say that I knew exactly what I was doing when I went into museum work, only that it turned out to be the best possible choice for me.


Today I am focused on quilting, which has pulled so many disparate parts of my life together for several years now. I'm in the fifth generation of quilters in the matriarchal line of my family. Here's the first part of the story: in 1994, my grandmother Johnson left me a quilt that I had not known existed. This quilt was made by Nancy Ellinor Honnoll Walker (b. 1852, d. 1922) in Mississippi. It was made for and most likely with her second daughter, my great-grandmother, Mary Marcella “Mossie” Walker Brooks (Gran Brooks to us), b. 1874. The name Mossie is embroidered on two central blocks, with the year 1881 on one of those. I suspect that this was Mossie's first real project.

I did not know much about the Honnoll line before I started researching this quilt. Now I know that they were, among other things, beekeepers. Here's an illustration from a patent awarded to Nancy's father Peter on August 31, 1875.


Beekeeping is one talent that did not span the generations to us, I fear. Not even remotely.


Nancy Ellinor Honnoll married John Hinton Walker (b. 1853) in Mississippi in 1871. We know that the Walkers moved from Mississippi to Oklahoma (near Altus) around 1882 in a covered wagon. Grandma Walker would have been 29 when she and her little 7-year-old daughter finished this quilt, with 5 children already born and several more to come. We have nothing else surviving of the Walkers’ records or possessions that I know of.

The quilt is appliqued with large solid-color autumn leaves in orange and brown. The back is a blue print-striped cotton. There appears to be little or no actual filling or batting in it. It is machine-quilted. How did they manage to afford a sewing machine of any kind in that place at that time? Let the purists sneer that it wasn't hand-quilted. I think is is extraordinary that it wasn't.

Gran Brooks kept this quilt with her, put away safely, all her life. She married Joseph Newton Brooks in 1897 at her parents’ home in Oklahoma and had four children, the next to the youngest being my grandmother, Vada Vivian Brooks Johnson (b. 1909 in Oklahoma). Gran Brooks quilted all her life and had quilting frames hung from the ceiling. Among other things, she ran a boarding house during the Depression in Oklahoma; we have a few of her recipes, but mostly things were just not written down. She lived the last several years of her life on a farm outside Littlefield, Texas, near her son and daughter-in-law.


Damage to the edges of the quilt is most likely the result of a devastating tornado that struck the farm in 1957. Gran Brooks died as a result of injuries suffered in this. Much of the family information above was gleaned from individual pages from the family Bible recovered after the tornado. My grandmother took the quilt and put it away, and no one saw it for the next 37 years or even knew about it. My mother did not even know of its existence until my grandmother gave it to her for me, very shortly before my grandmother died.

In 2003, my husband and I were married at the Historic Church of St. Thomas at the Delaware Agricultural Museum in Dover, a tiny gem of a Methodist chapel. The good staff and volunteers there kindly helped me by sewing a sleeve on the back so that it could be hung in the chapel as a backdrop for our wedding. This was its first public display ever, the first time anyone outside my mother’s family had ever seen it. We needed no other decorations.
 
The quilt has been with me ever since and has inspired me to quilt on my own. It will be 129 years old this year. May it see in many more new years on the prairies.

2010 is now in the building....

It was evening all afternoon.

It was snowing
And it was going to snow.
The blackbird sat
In the cedar-limbs.

by Wallace Stevens (1879-1955) , from Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird, 1917

Actually, it is a grey morning all morning, a week after a blizzard that brought South Dakota to a halt. It's the first day of 2010, and the morning after a full moon. These are observations, not omens. I am looking forward to a ritual Southern New Year's Day dinner with black-eyed peas, cornbread and wine. After that, I will continue quilting and thinking about the year ahead.

2010 promises great joy and will require much work on all fronts. There may be joyous and sorrowful changes. Every day, I hold a bit of the deep past in my hands and of my own past in my memories. It is time to write them down and to map them out.

Everyone who works in a museum and touches the fragments of history knows the melancholy joy of it. I seek it in the tiny buildings dotting the prairie and hills as well as in my daily work, and I sew it into the quilts that are becoming one of my own greatest joys.