Garnhart Group of Quilts #1: Revisiting Some Old Mysteries

Building on research that former DAR Museum Curators Gloria Allen and Nancy Gibson and independent researcher Dorothy Cozart have done on the almost identical quilt shown at DAR Museum on loan, current curator Alden O'Brien, Debby Cooney and I gave much thought to the similarities between the Welch quilt and its twin attributed to Catherine Garnhart by its owners, Catherine's descendants. Six years ago we looked long and hard for some Markey or Garnhart connection to Elizabeth Weltch or Welsh or Welch in Virginia and West Virginia.


Our major thread was a hope to link Elizabeth to Catherine Garnhart because many of the quilts attributed to her hand descended in the families of Catherine's 11 grandchildren by her first husband David Markey.  The best clue we had was Debby's recalling that William Dunton's notes contained a reference to a Welch in Frederick. Plate 89 in his book Old Quilts is probably the Brooklyn Museum's quilt then owned by collector Pauline Eppley Leiter of Hagerstown.


Alden organized the research on this pair of time-worn quilts that may have descended in another New England/Ohio family with no ties to the Markeys or Garnharts and none to Virginia.

In the years since the Brooklyn Museum exhibit I've tried interpreting the Garnhart quilts from a number of angles. This amazing body of quilts often attributed to one woman sparked my skepticism that one seamstress working alone made all those attributed to her. The alternative theory involved looking at quiltmaking as a commercial enterprise rather than a hobby or an artistic labor of love.

I started the blog Woman's Work: Making a Living Making Quilts a little over a year ago to clarify my thinking about creating style, marketing fabric and selling quilts in an economic context.
https://womensworkquilts.blogspot.com/

Five years ago I saw the prints as general "chintzes," game birds, baskets, and vague florals. I realized I'd have to learn a lot more about chintz. By categorizing details of early-19th-century quilts I found many popular designs used over and over in these applique designs often called Broderie Perse. Comparing fabrics gives us a much better idea of when the quilts were made.

I also decided I needed to learn a lot more about Frederick, Maryland where Catherine Garnhart lived her long life, born just before the American Revolution and dying just before the Civil War. What was Catherine's social network like? If she indeed made all these quilts who helped her?  What was her economic status? Who was sewing for a pastime in Frederick and who was sewing for a living in Frederick? Who was selling chintzes?

Learning about Frederick was realtively easy and learning something about Catherine, a middle class woman of her time, was also relatively easy (especially since Suzanne Antippas assisted with a good deal of genealogical work on her). But learning about the economics of sewing for a living there in the first half of the century has been one dead end after another.

I thought I'd post all this week about the Garnhart quilts, what I've found and how my thinking has changed.

In deciding how many Garnhart quilts there are we are relying on old images and it's hard to figure out if we are missing any or counting the same quilt twice. Here's an example:


The most telling detail is the upper left corner of the pair.