Object:
Friendship QuiltCatalog #: 2004.63.1
Donor: Sue Caraway
Folks often wonder how an object makes its way to the Museum. Sometimes the path is straight, sometimes it’s more circuitous. For one particular friendship quilt, it all began when a dear friend of the Museum noticed a posting on a genealogical web site and sent along the link.
In 2003 Sue Caraway purchased 15 friendship quilt blocks at a California antique store. Intrigued with the names embroidered across the center of each colorful block, she began trying to unravel their history. She found one of the names, Polena Holland, in the Social Security Death Index at RootsWeb.com; a few hours later Mrs. Caraway had tied Holland and six other names with Benton County. She posted her results on the website’s newsletter under the title of “Quilting Together a Story.”
Mrs. Caraway soon heard from several folks who could shed more light. From Velda Hinton she learned that Della Crone and her cousin Polena were the grandaughters of James Albert Crone and Nancy Lydia Watts. The Crones moved with their young children from Georgia to Arkansas in 1870; Nancy died along the way and was buried in Alabama. Polena married Barry Louis Holland in 1908. Talitah “Jimmie” Crone was Polena’s mother.
From Elaine Dake she learned that the folks named on the quilt blocks all lived in the Maysville area, in the western part of Benton County near the border with Oklahoma. Della Crone lived about a quarter of a mile from the Baptist church and went there every Sunday morning to light the fire in the woodstove.
The Museum did a bit of digging of its own and sent Mrs. Caraway some historical info as well. Both Mary Locke and Minnie Johnson are buried in the Fairmont Cemetery just north of Springtown. Buried in the Maysville Cemetery are Della Crone, Polena Holland, Callie Payne, and Robert Payne. Della Crone, who never married, was the Crone family historian. She owned a farm at Maysville and was a member of the Baptist church for 57 years.
Doriece
Chastain was the youngest of 11 children. Her family homesteaded in the Fairmont
district, near Springtown and Gentry, Arkansas. Doriece taught at the Friendship
School, south of Siloam Springs, Arkansas, in 1908; she later taught in Seminole
County, Oklahoma, where she met and married her husband, W.I. Aldridge, in 1910.
It was he who called her “Sally” although she was called “Dode” by her family
and “Shug” by her mother. Doriece returned to teaching after having four
daughters. In 1931 the Aldridges moved to Apache, Oklahoma.Melissa Chastain was Doriece’s sister. “Lissa” and several members of the Chastain family moved to Cortez, Colorado, to homestead. Lissa was married to Robert Shields who died around 1900 of “quick” consumption. After the couple’s five children were grown, “Aunt Lissa” lived in a number of her relatives’ households in Benton County and Missouri, helping out where needed.
Knowing some of the details of some of these folks’ lives can help us date the quilt blocks, up to a point. Because Polena wrote her last name as Holland rather than Crone, we know the quilt was made sometime after her marriage in 1908. But several members of this group moved in and out of the Benton County through the years; without knowing when they lived here or when some of them died, we can’t place an end date for the manufacture of the blocks.
Trying to date the blocks based on their fabrics is a bit trickier as many of the patterns and colors are typical of the early 1900s. With its medium blue color and printed white wreaths, Callie Payne’s block in the top right corner is the oldest of all the fabrics, dating to the turn of the 20th century or even earlier. The block just below Callie’s may have McPalmer embroidered on it but it’s hard to tell, because the signature seems to have been written with a shaky hand. Its rather loud blue and lavender plaid pattern may be the newest of all the fabrics, possibly dating to the 1920s or 1930s. Overall most of the fabrics are rather light in tone, complimenting the colorways frequently chosen by quilters in that later time period.
