Maria Spear's Quilt: Fundraiser for Confederate Memorial

Silk Quilt made by the ladies of Fayetteville, North Carolina,

led by Maria L. Spear (1804-1881).

Collection of the Museum of the Confederacy, Richmond, Virginia

97" x 99"
1865-1867

Detail of the quilt

Maria L. Spear, born in England, is said to have drawn each of the black squares for the Fayetteville women to embroider.

Post-Civil-War women's groups worked to memorialize local soldiers. A quilt in the Museum of the Confederacy collection is well documented as a fundraiser to build the memorial at the Cross Creek Cemetery in Fayetteville, North Carolina. Ann Kyle headed the Fayetteville's Soldiers' Aid Association and determined to build a marble monument.

The Cross Creek memorial is North Carolina's first 

Confederate memorial,

according to Douglas J. Butler.

It was dedicated in December, 1868

http://ncmonuments.ncdcr.gov/Photos.aspx?searchterm=25

Spear, a skilled needlewoman and teacher, volunteered to organize a quilt to be raffled for the cause. The women met every Friday afternoon to sew for months, but after Spear moved to Chapel Hill little work went on without her. After two years Spear lamented, "When I saw the Quilt this evening, I felt overwhelmed, how I am to get it done, I don't know."She finished it in six months and the ad below in the Fayetteville News described it as "elaborately embroidered...beautiful silken quilt of the richest and finest material."

"The designs are all of a different pattern and worked, many of them, on a ground not exceeding a square inch; the colors are contrasted and blended with true artistic skill---beautiful sprays and bouquets of flowers and various emblematical designs combine to make up an article which for elegance of design, fineness of materials and superiority of execution has never been surpassed in this or any country...

The ladies acknowledge their indebtedness to the indefatigable industry and inexhaustible taste of Miss Maria L. Spear who invented the unique style of making up the quilt. She also invented and stamped all the beautiful and varied designs with which it is embellished."

The quilt raised $300 in dollar raffle tickets and was won by Martha Lewis who gave it to Jefferson Davis, former President of the Confederacy. After his death, Varina Davis donated it to the Museum.

Find the catalog page in the online quilt exhibit at the Museum of the Confederacy website here:
http://www.moc.org/exhibitions/museum-confederacys-quilts?mode=general
Load the exhibit and scroll through.

Read the story here in Douglas J. Butler's: North Carolina Civil War Monuments: An Illustrated History:

http://books.google.com/books?id=yyvmcMsNnB4C&pg=PA512&lpg=PA512&dq=maria+spear+fayetteville&source=bl&ots=uFVJWzvGso&sig=FztRgVlY4hg9VjDmM8ZWxMTDyDI&hl=en&sa=X&ei=bQK3U-bGGIOGyATfoYKYAg&ved=0CCMQ6AEwATgK#v=onepage&q=maria%20spear%20fayetteville&f=false