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The Dresden-plate-pattern quilt that my maternal
grandmother, Anna Truan Dobson, made for my mother, Martha, as a gift for her wedding
in 1932 was the family treasure that I coveted most of all, especially after my
husband and I and our three children moved from New York City to an antique
colonial house in Massachusetts in the 1970’s.
But my mother wasn’t about to part with it, even though she kept it
hidden away in a closet.
I poured my longing into buying other antique quilts and learning
about quilt patterns. I hung a tumbling-blocks quilt and a barn-raising quilt
on the walls above the staircase and put framed squares from a very old
tree-of-life quilt in the upstairs hall.
Part of the magic of my mother’s quilt was its story (or “provenance”,
as they say in the antique world.). My
beautiful grandmother Anna, born in Tennessee to a French-speaking Swiss-immigrant
family in 1872, finished collage with two degrees before the turn of the
century—a rarity for a Southern girl. The first time my grandfather, Reverend Frederick
Fee Dobson, proposed to her, she turned him down, probably because she knew that
accepting would mean she’d have to travel with him to Indian Territory in what
is now Oklahoma and help him convert the natives to Christianity and establish
churches and schools there.
But some time later, Frederick came back to Tennessee and
proposed again, and this time Anna accepted.
She was 24 when they were married on January 16, 1896 at
Tahlequah Institute, Indian Territory, Oklahoma. In the photograph above she
stands on the right in the back row on the “porch of the dormitory” with the
other faculty members. The women were her bridesmaids and the man with the
mustache was Reverend Hamilton, the minister who married them.
Between the age of 24 and 49, Anna gave
birth to nine children—two boys and then seven girls. My mother Martha was number six. She remembers hearing her mother weeping when
she realized that she was pregnant with the last one. In the photo above, Anna is holding that daughter,
Betty, and you can see that her hair has turned white. My mother is at right in the second row.
In Oklahoma, Anna taught Native
American children at the Tahlequah Presbyterian school and instructed their
mothers in tatting, crocheting and quilting. Later she taught Sunday School and
augmented the budget by giving piano and French lessons. Every Saturday night
she would supervise bathing the children in a tin tub in the kitchen and would
prepare the Sunday meal so that the whole family could attend all three Sunday
services. (My mother told me that they were not allowed to play cards or even
read the newspaper on Sunday.) The photo above shows the family after church, at a time when there were only seven children. My mother is the moppet in front next to her father.
For the weddings of each of her nine
children Anna made a quilt in the pattern and colors they chose. My mother told me that her father, the
minister, also made one square of her quilt so he could participate in the gift.
I always admired my grandmother for her
beauty and her intellectual curiosity. After her children were grown and her husband
died in 1948, she traveled and lectured about birds, wild flowers and biblical
subjects. She also found time to keep on researching and learning until she
suffered a stroke in her eighties. She
died in 1964, aged 92.
My own mother died of heart failure in
1985 and the wedding quilt became mine at last.
From my research into vintage quilts I’ve learned that at least some of
the fabrics in it came from patterned cotton flour sacks, and that the Dresden
plate pattern was very popular in the 1930’s.
Along with the wedding quilt, I also
inherited a brooch from my grandmother--shown above in front of another
photograph of Anna. The lady with the
scarf was an immensely popular beauty in Victorian times, and her likeness
could be found on plates, dolls, brooches and even cigarette tins. Long before the day of the internet search, I
learned from a hobby magazine that she was Queen Louise of Prussia, born in
1776 in Hanover. She married King Frederich Willhelm III and was much beloved
for her goodness to the poor.
I’ve even started collecting Queen
Louise embellished objects, using on-line auction marketplaces like Invaluable.com. They have a great collectibles section.
Neither
my grandmother’s quilt nor her brooch are as valuable as other pieces I own,
but so often, when a collector is asked which of his pieces he treasures the
most, the collector will name the one that has the most personal meaning
because of the story that comes with it. Naturally my Dresden plate quilt is my favorite, because my grandmother (and grandfather) made every stitch with their own hands.
