Over the weekend I drove up to Bucks County to pick up a donation to the Newtown Square Historical Society – an 1853 Quaker Friendship quilt. The quilt did not come with much of its history – other than what is displayed on the quilt itself. There are 81 blocks of white in 13 quilt rows and each block has the name and hometown of one or two people. All in all, 97 names are represented on the quilt. They are all the good Quaker surnames that we associate with Delaware and Chester counties.
The only provenance was that it was said to be the quilt of Phebe Ann Lewis. I found Phebe on ancestry.com, born in Newtown Square in 1825. So in the year that the quilt was made, Phebe was 28. Posted in Phebe’s tree was a photograph of a quilt with the same design – but dated 1845. I reached out to the poster, and he told me that his wife’s family, the Garrett family, has that quilt. Phebe’s daughter married into the Garrett family. Phebe was born a Lewis, and our donor is a Lewis. So that makes sense how these quilts were passed down in each family.
Sewing for the Quaker women of this time was a life skill and an occasion to gather with their community of friends. This particular type of quilt, a friendship or signature album quilt, was a fad from the 1840s into the 1850s. Phebe got caught up in the flow. Perhaps she was the organizer of the effort each winter to make a new quilt.
One block, the contribution of 19-year-old Margaret L. Williamson, has a poem, and the year. The poem is quite faded, but with a magnifying glass and help from Google, I found the poem in an 1841 publication for women:
There is a sigh to memory dear,
For those we love when far away
There is a gentle thrilling tear
Illumes the heart with placid ray.
It steals across the tranquil mind,
When musing on some favorite spot
It tells of those we left behind
And sweetly breathes, “Forget me not.”
The Newtown Square Friends Meeting will be displaying this quilt on Sundays at 10:00 am. Come sit in Quaker silence for an hour and inspect Phebe’s quilt and the workmanship of the local Quaker women of the 1850’s! And let them know that we forget them not.
For more history on Edgmont Township, Delaware County, and membership information, please visit our Facebook group, “Edgmont Historical Society”.