The Home Stretch

In the midst of special birthdays, anniversaries and a family wedding I have been collating the final pattern of the block of the month Chester Criswell Quilt.  The first block was released nearly three years ago in August 2012 and Block 33 will be unleashed in a few days.  Congratulations to all of you that have kept up with the blocks and shared your blogs, you deserve a medal!

The final block doesn't mean the end of the quilt.  The patterns are all available at Two Bits Patches, you can still buy one or two or all.  There are a few surprises still to come, so keep watching this space.

Do you like my new collection?  My aunt has been downsizing and I have been given these family photos.

 

This is my new favourite.  These are Mary McClellan Smith nee Criswell's daughters; Mary, Alice and Marion. The photo is about 1885.  Marion was my great grandmother.

...changed my mind.  This is my new favourite, Ryan just turned one and we had a birthday party at an animal farm.  Happy birthday Ryan.

The Family Circle

Now that I have discovered Mary Criswell's older sister Agnes Smith I though I would see where her block fits in the Chester Criswell Quilt.

This is the centre of the quilt.  The large block in the centre is Andrew and Alice Criswell, Mary and Agnes's parents.  E3 is Mary Criswell's wreath which is the same as D6, Martha Lambourn's.  (The pattern is the same but not the date - Mary's is dated March 13th 1852 and Martha's is 4th Month 2nd Day 1852.  Mary was a Presbyterian and Martha a Quaker.)
Mary's sister Margaret is F4 and I'm not surprised to find that the 'new' sister Agnes is next door F5.  There are other important blocks here too.

C3   William Criswell, one of Mary's brothers (deceased)
C4   Alice McClellan, Mary's Godmother
C5   Lizzie Lambourn, Martha's younger sister
C6   J Dickey Smith,  Agnes Criswell Smith's son and Mary's nephew
E6   Martha Richmond, Alice McClellan's niece

One of the unanswered questions is as follows:

Who made the quilt?

My first assumption, now called Theory A, is that Mary's mother Alice made the quilt. There are far more relatives represented than friends on the quilt, many of them older cousins and aunts. But would Alice put herself and her husband in the middle of the bride's quilt?  It doesn't quite make sense.

Theory B:  Mary McClellan Criswell made the quilt herself, asking her family and friends to make the blocks.  She put her parents in the centre partly as a thank you and partly as a source of her own 'familyness.'  If Mary already had her dozen quilts in her glory box this could have been the thirteenth special quilt.

 (from Wikipedia - The term "hope chest" or "cedar chest" is used in the midwest or south of the United States; in the United Kingdom, the term is "bottom drawer"; while "glory box" is used by women in Australia.)

"This album's then a wreath for thee"

Theory C:  Martha Lambourn organised the quilt and the collected blocks were given to Mary as an engagement present. The verse on Martha's block suggests a gift from friends; the verse on Mary's suggests receiving such a gift. This was certainly common in the 1850s although pieced identical blocks would be more likely than the large appliques of this quilt.  But would Martha have contacted all of Mary's relatives, and why would she put Alice and Andrew in the middle?


Theory D:  All of the above, but I will never know for sure.  If we had all the answers then there would be nothing left to wonder about. 

A Family Secret Revealed

Yesterday a total stranger sent me an email that led to the revelation of another secret of the Chester Criswell Quilt.


Do you remember Block 21, Mary Trayner's eight petalled daisy?  There is a second block in the quilt of the same design.

The names on this block are Joseph Smith and Agnes C Smith, Fairview.  In the Block 21 story I wrote,

"These Smiths are related to the bride; again, more research needs to be done to find the exact relationship."

Yesterday I received an email from Linda through Ancestry.com.  I don't know Linda, but her own family history search had found some Smiths and some Criswells.  She sent me an email to say that she found my quilt family tree and told me that one of the online resources on Ancestry.com might be helpful to my research.

Smiths are always hard to research so I was pleased to follow Linda's hint and opened up 'Record of the Smith Family', written by Joseph Harris in 1906.  The record follows the descendents of John and Susanna Smith who migrated from Ireland to the Americas in 1720.  John and Susanna brought four of their children with them, one more was born on the voyage and a further ten were born in the New World.

Fortunately the 272 pages of Smiths are indexed and I quickly found Joseph and Agnes.  Their record looks like this.

 

Aha! Agnes was a Criswell before she became a Smith.  I added 'Criswell' to Agnes' record and Ancestry.com promptly came up with a death certificate.  On the certificate are the names of Agnes' parents.

Agnes Criswell Smith's parents are Andrew G. Criswell and Alice Carlile.

Agnes Criswell has the same parents as the bride Mary McClellan Criswell.

Agnes is Mary's older sister.

I couldn't believe it.  How could I have missed another sister for Mary?  I went back and forth between the records to confirm what I had just found.  Yes, the bride Mary had an older sister who was already married.

How did I miss this important relationship?  The 1850 census records are my starting point.  Agnes was married before 1850, and living with husband Joseph and three year old son John Dickey Smith on their own farm, close to the original Criswell farm.  I didn't know Agnes' maiden name was Criswell, I only had the initial 'C'. I was aware of all of Mary younger siblings; Margaret and Susanna were recorded in the 1850 census.  The Faggs Manor cemetery records provided the names of her other four brothers and sisters. My grandmother's notes only mentioned Mary and did not include any siblings.

Have you found the next clue yet?  The children of John Smith and Hannah Dickey are Joseph Smith and Jackson Smith, each of whom married a Criswell girl.  Jackson Smith is Jesse Jackson Smith so his Criswell bride is Mary McClellan herself.  The Smith brothers married the Criswell sisters.

Now the groom has a family too, something I had not been able to discover without this new source of information.  I have the name of a brother, his father and mother and his grandfather so I can work on Jesse Jackson's family tree.

It was hard to get to sleep last night with all these names running through my head.  Just before I went to sleep I had an amazing revelation.

If Alice Criswell's daughter Mary was not her first daughter to be married but the second one........

...... there must be another, earlier Chester Criswell Quilt.

The Autograph Age Part 2

Some of the participants in the Chester Quilt added a verse to their quilt block.  Mary Criswell's verse reflects her receipt of the quilt as gift from her friends.

'My album is a garden plot

Here all my friends may sow,

Where thorns and thistles flourish not

But flowers alone will grow.'

Mary's best friend Martha Lambourn made an identical block to Mary's.  Her verse could be on behalf of all Mary's friends.

'Not I alone, this wreath will twine

But all thy friends who write a line

In this receptical of thine

Shall form the wreath in unity.

This album's then's a wreath for thee

Sacred to love and memory

And every name a flower shall be

A pure bright gem of constancy.'

Mary's sister Margaret continues the garden theme.

'The golden sun of summer

Hath never shone more fair

Than on the odour of the dying flowers

Which lies so sweetly on the air.'

Mary Stubbs states the obvious.

'Like a leaf we all must die.'

Margaretta goes for a round about message with round about writing.

 

'Round is the ring that has no end
So is my love for you my friend.'

But Jane Trayner has the last word with the classic:

'Remember me when this you see.'

Family History and Quiltmaking

About fifteen years ago my Australian husband began his family tree.  He started, like we all do, with information from parents and grandparents.  Then off to the library for hours spent in the microfiche index records finding names, dates and places.  Once the right index was found, it was down to the mailbox to post a cheque to the Births, Deaths and Marriages.  A few weeks later a little slip of paper would arrive and, hey presto, a few more bits of information were added to the family tree.
We gave him a software program to transfer all his little bits of paper safely into the computer.  Then we changed computers and everything disappeared.  That was the end of that family history adventure.

Researching the makers of the Criswell quilt is similar to family tree research.  Ancestry.com is certainly my first port of call, especially as I live in Australia and the records are all in the USA.  The big difference is that I already know all the names; I just don't know how they relate to each other and to Mary McClelland Criswell.

I have made an online family tree called the Criswell Quilt Tree.  It not really one tree but more of a grove of saplings.  My starting place is the 1850 Federal Census records for Chester County; the quilt was made in 1852 and farming families didn't move around a lot.  There are about 80 signatures on the quilt and I have recorded about 400 individuals in the Quilt Tree.  I know something about a majority of the people on the quilt although some are reluctant to be verified.

Let me tell you about my latest 'win' in the family history game.  I was looking for that most elusive family name - Smith.  If you have a Smith in your family tree, you know how difficult it is to find your Smith and not everyone else's Smith.

James R and Nancy C Smith

This block is signed by James R Smith and Nancy C Smith, East Nottingham.  From the 1850 census I know that they have two little children.  In the 1860 census there are more people in the family; but when I looked at the original census page the image is too light to read.  I send a note to Ancestry.com that it was illegible and then went on with something else.
That was a few months ago.  I decided to have another look at the Smiths the other evening, went to the census page and ... the original has been rescanned and is now clear as day!  This is what I found:

James R and Nancy Smith still married and farming.  Mary and William are ten years older, and in addition there are Jane, Elizabeth and Alice.  But wait, there's more!  Dorcas Smith aged 60 and Jahn Carlisle aged 73 are also family members.
Many families in these records are multi-generational.  I take a small leap of faith here and assume that Dorcas Smith is James' mother and John Carlisle is Nancy's family. Nancy's middle initial C probably stands for Carlisle.   Dorcas Smith is a new person so I add her to the tree.  Carlisle/Carlile is a common name on the quilt - Mary McClelland Criswell's mother was a Carlile - so I look to see if I have a John Carlile of the right age.  Bingo!  John Carlile is in the tree, in 1850 he was living with his wife Mary and son James Taylor Carlile - who also has a block in the quilt.



James Taylor Carlile, Elk Dale

 That makes Nancy Smith and James Carlile sister and brother, another link is made, and my family quilt tree grows another notch.

(I made some more Smith discoveries, but I'll save them for another time.)