1863 Album, Elizabeth, New Jersey

It would be great to see more of this 1863 album quilt

from Elizabeth, New Jersey

99  blocks, 96 of them signed

I've been sorting my paper files getting them in shape to send to the Quilt Research Collection at the University of Nebraska Libraries. I found this newsprint in my file of Civil War quilts, published in an article by Enola Gish in the small town newspaper, the Baldwin, Kansas Telegraphics in 1983. Enola met the Florida woman who owned it---she seems to have bought it at a garage sale.

Three names were mentioned: C.M. and S.A. Butler who signed the pieced baskets and Mrs. Woodward who signed the striped fabric on the left side below the heart and hand block.

That's all I know about the 1863 quilt. Was it a Civil War patriotic quilt

or one that just happened to have been made in 1863?

American Folk Art Museum Collection

Ladies of the Methodist/Episcopal Church, Elizabethtown, dated 1853 for the Dunns

Several surviving quilts made for ministers' wives have been attributed to Elizabeth, New Jersey, once called Elizabethtown. Lee Kogan wrote an article for the Folk Art Museum's Clarion (Winter 1989-1990 issue) about three similar samplers.

American Museum in Britain

Baptist Church, Elizabethtown, dated 1852 for the Waterburys

Newark Museum

Presbyterian Church, Elizabethtown, dated 1852 for the Reinharts

See Kogan's article in The Clarion here:

https://issuu.com/american_folk_art_museum/docs/clarion_15_1_win1989-90/60

Page 58

We might guess the quilt at the top of the page was made in the early 1850s in Elizabethtown

but that 1863 date leaves no doubt it was finished ten years later.