The recently published “Threads Through Time: Quilts of the Gloucester County Historical Society” describes the history of quilting and depicts some of the more than 100 quilts at the society’s Woodbury museum.
Human beings started making quilts some 5,400 years ago for warmth, and even five millennia ago, used decorative elements in their creations.
Quilt making was common in Colonial America. Some were made of leftover scraps or worn clothing to keep poorer families warm, while most were works of art with needlework. During the 18th and 19th centuries, African Americans used quilts as signals for escaped slaves on the Underground Railroad by hanging them on clotheslines and windowsills of safe houses.
Symbols included the bow tie, meaning to dress in disguise to appear of a higher status, and the bear paw, to follow an animal trail through the mountains to find water and food.
The Gloucester County Historical Society’s Woodbury museum has more than 100 quilts from the 1700s and 1800s at its museum in Woodbury, and through a collaboration of its members, has just published a book about them.
“We are so excited about our fabulous collection of quilts,” said Janet Burr, an emerita trustee of the society and a widely acknowledged expert in the history, methods and lore of quilts and quilting. “We have all styles, all varieties and all fabrics.”
Burr is one of the co-authors of the new book, “Threads Through Time: Quilts of the Gloucester County Historical Society,” and has spent decades studying the history; materials; techniques; and meanings of quilts, now recognized as works of art. She has also explored unique, tangible records of the Delaware Valley’s social and cultural history, according to Hoag Levins, chairperson of the historical society’s publications committee.
The book also touches on the society’s extensive collection of quilts dating back to the 1700s, “including large photographs and descriptions of the quilts and the local people who made and passed them along from generation to generation as family heirlooms,” Levins explained.
“The book was a collaborative effort,” Burr noted. “Patricia Hrynenko (nee Waltman) picked out the quilts to use and Jeanne Hagerman did the write-ups about the quilts.”
Both women passed away before the book was published.
Also helping out were Levins, Leona Hansell and John Leone. Created by the historical society’s team, the book project was funded by a grant from the New Jersey Council on the Arts through the Gloucester County Cultural and Heritage Commission of Rowan College of South Jersey.
“Aside from the artistic beauty of the quilts,” Levins indicated, “the accompanying provenance, maker and family ownership details in the book provide valuable information for genealogical researchers and other historians.”
A longtime resident of Westville Borough, Burr shared her love of history with her husband of 45 years, Richard, who passed away in 2021. He once served as administrator and chief financial officer of the town and was an accomplished genealogist. He also belonged to 25 patriotic and hereditary organizations and was proud to have 18 Revolutionary War ancestors.
The new book underscores how regional quilt makers engaged in a craft that was both a practical and aesthetic endeavor, preserving the social and cultural history of the time while reflecting the realities of life and commerce in those earlier eras, Levins pointed out.
During a recent speech in Franklinville, Burr presented quilts made by her mother, friends of her daughter, her husband’s grandmother, her great-grandmother’s gift quilt for her parents’ wedding and her husband’s aunt’s crib quilts for both her daughter and son. She also showed a quilt from 1841 celebrating the wedding of her husband’s great-great-grandparents that has been passed down through the Burr family for more than a century.
There are many different kinds of quilts, including signature and friendship quilts. Patchwork quilts involve sewing large numbers of small fabric blocks together to create a whole fabric sheet. The blocks are often in geometric shapes that form intricate patterns across the quilt, Burr said.
Autograph quilts feature the signatures of their makers or sponsors written in ink, embroidered or stamped onto fabric squares, and were very popular during the 1800s. Groups of quilters would gather together to sew album quilts by using “appliqués of their own design to ultimately form a large mosaic of unique images that often captured the essence of a theme, event or place,” Burr added.
The historical society’s collection includes examples of quilts in the signature/autograph/friendship, crazy quilts, drunkard’s path, grandmother’s floral garden, Jacob’s ladder, log cabin, nine patch, postage stamp and yo-yo styles and patterns – to name a few.
Created by a society team, the book was funded by a grant from the New Jersey Council on the Arts through the Gloucester County Cultural and Heritage Commission of Rowan College of South Jersey. It’s available at the society website, https://bit.ly/quilt-book.
