Kentucky Classic #7: Wild Persimmon for Lucy Kemper West

 

Kentucky Classic #7, Wild Persimmon by Elsie Ridgley

Some design elements in these Kentucky Classic quilts are quite common, for example the roses with 8 lobes and the buds or fruit we are calling a Kentucky Paw-paw (see last month's block)...

Rose                    Fruit

Others like the Goldenrod (Block #4) seem unusual enough to offer a good clue to a Garrard County quilt.

A second distinctive regional element is this fruit full of dots.

Barb Eikmeier Collection

Found in Missouri

Zerelda Emmaline McClary Oliver (b ca. 1822)

Garrard County, Kentucky

Also seen in Missouri

findagrave.com/memorial/17145869/zerelda-emmaline-oliver

McCain Whig Rose

This month's pattern's inspiration is Lucy Kemper West's quilt 

in the DAR Museum, full of dots and fruit. 

Last month we discussed Lucy's niece Louisa West Jackman, 

a fellow Garrard County resident.

Lucy's husband Lysander West and Louisa's father Henry were brothers. 

Lucy Kemper was born in 1792 and died a few days after her 84th birthday in 1876. She was a generation older than some of the other quiltmakers discussed here, marrying Lysander West in 1812 and giving birth to 7 children before 1826. Husband Lysander died in 1840. 

Eldest son Lysander II joined many other Kentuckians in moving to Missouri before the Civil War settling in Cass County in the western part of the state near Kansas City. Others of her children and siblings also seemed to have lived and died in Missouri.

The quilt in the DAR Museum is said to have won a prize at the Missouri State Fair in 1926 although fair records do not mention any familiar names.

1926 State Fair, Sedalia

Perhaps Lysander brought the quilt to Missouri and his descendants entered it in the "Old Quilt" category. I wonder if it wasn't made by Lysander's wife Ruth Smith Logan West (1830-1924,) another Kentucky-born woman of the generation to have been making such fancy quilts in the 1850s.

The Block

Wild Persimmon

We could see the fruit that is so typical of these Garrard County quilts as a pineapple, except pineapples don't really have dots or grow in Kentucky. How about a native Kentucky persimmon full of seeds?

Wild Persimmons

Side-by-side set of 14"/15" blocks

Elsie Ridgley's blocks 1-7 with border. Two more to go.

The fruit full of seeds is the last pattern included in Becky Brown's Medallion Kentucky Classic.

Becky's finished top. She certainly added a bit to the basic pattern.

Spectacular!

The fruit goes over the corner seams. I'd guess if you enlarge the pattern 180% you will have the fruit and leaves.

A few relevant links:

https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/37403676/lucy-west

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2012/02/garrard-county-kentucky.html

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2023/05/kentucky-river-rose-pattern.html

https://quiltindex.org/view/?type=fullrec&kid=16-12-146

 

Denver Art Museum

Here's a modified medallion format with a looser arrangement.
Know nothing about it but it looks Kentucky classic to me.

The applique on that one seems to have been done with a herringbone stitch.

Amanda Moran's center image is not square. The fruit appliques do not rotate around the center either but are flipped.