Great grandmother Martha Westgate Quimby started this log cabin quilt on Tuesday, February 17, 1885.  The temperature that day in Cornish, N.H. was 6 degrees above zero (which Martha called “pleasant” in her diary).  Her handiwork is what first got me interested in both quilting and genealogy. 

“Grammy Great” was long gone by the time I took the quilt down from my mother’s living room wall in order to see how severely the sun and smoke from the nearby fireplace had damaged it.  The crimson squares in the center of each block, which are supposed to represent the hearth at the center of a home, had faded to the color of pencil erasers.  The red silk ribbons that tied each block to the batting and backing were frizzled threads.  But the overall pattern of dark/light diamonds remained, as did the wonderful white-dotted plus-sign in the center. 

Mattie was 15 years old when she began her log cabin quilt – teaching in district schools and spending as many evenings as possible attending “sociables.” Like other needlework that has been passed down to us, it seems to bring us into contact with the hands that made it – touching the strips that Mattie sewed by hand is like being in the warm spot by the woodstove where she may have worked, hearing the wind in the chimney.  The scraps, many of which had disintegrated when I inherited it, are from family clothing or a fabric exchange with friends.

Mattie didn’t make many quilts, although she was adept at sewing clothing for her family.  But when it came to her wedding dress, I believe her mother called on one of the seamstresses in the family. Peggy still treasures the silk

skirt that Mattie wore when she married Elwin Quimby, with its fall colors and frills, suitable to the mid-December ceremony that preceded the birth of Mattie’s first baby a few months later.

Men were not excluded from the fiber arts in the Quimby family.   Great great grandfather William Westgate, who spent most of his time chopping wood, breeding cattle and overseeing the local poor farm, recorded in his diary that he “worked on his afghan” one winter evening. 

Erwin Quimby (our great grandfather’s twin brother) liked to embroider; cousin Ron gets a kick out of looking at one of Erwin’s pieces every day. 

As a dean of women and professor of English literature at the turn of the 20th century, Flora Clough (Marguerite Quimby’s aunt) eschewed the womanly arts, but she did leave a collection of exquisite lace that she may have purchased during her trip to northern Europe to study Scottish lays.  Cousin Barbara shared pictures of some stunning samples with me: 

Needlecraft passed from one generation to the next:  Marguerite Lewin Quimby produced a folksy rug depicting “Seven Acres” that will surely withstand thousands of muddy boots for generations to come.  My sister Beth drew the picture that GaGa used to create the rug on a loom in the mid-70s, probably at the Mothers and Daughters Club on land that Curt Lewin (Marguerite’s father) donated to the town of Plainfield.  For a viewing of the rug, visit the Quimby cabin in Cornish, uphill from the farm where the Westgate/Quimbys lived.

And, finally, Carol Heath faithfully copied the “famous” needlepoint that advised us all from the kitchen wall of Seven Acres in the 1950s and beyond:

My favorite piece of ancestral fiber art is something no living person has ever seen, as far as I know.  For 10 years I’d been trying to learn more about Fredus Austin.  He was my mother’s great great grandfather, who showed up in Sag Harbor on Long Island as a soldier in the War of 1812.  I knew only that Fredus was born in Connecticut at the end of the 18th century, but nothing more about his origins – there were thousands of Austins in New England at the time, and I think I’ve sifted through them all. 

Recently, the National Archives sent me a copy of a pension request that was made by Fredus’ daughter Harriet Austin.   A minor living in New London after the death of her father, Harriet went to the county court in 1853 to ask the Pension Office to double the grant of Wisconsin land given to Fredus posthumously for his service during the war.  [She argued that the portion of bounty land granted to her father was too little, based on his length of service (three months).] Here is what she said in that courtroom, 

“Deponent… says that no public record of the marriage of said Fredus A. Austin… exists to hir [sic] knowledge or to the knowledge of any of the other surviving members of the family of said Austin – but that a private family record exists and is contained in a “Sampler” which has long been kept by the family as a specimen of needlework of one of their children.  That on said record is the marriage of said Fredus A. Austin and Sarah his wife…. and of which the following is certified to be a true and correct copy viz.,

Fredus A. Austin was born Oct. 31, 1794; Sarah L. Woodward born March 18, 1793.  They were united in marriage Jan. 5, 1817.” 

Eureka!   Dear, darling Harriet… she won her suit before the pension committee, sold all 80 acres, and went on to marry a man 14 years her senior.  Wish I had that sampler…