1920-1929

Janet E. Finley Collection of Quilt History Photographs

Real Photo Postcard (RPPC) c. 1918-1922
Photographer: Unknown
Size: 3.5" x 5.5"

Nancy is seated next to her husband, Ira James Hill. Nancy's artfully rendered Crazy quilt was tacked onto an outside wall of a building situated on their Prathers Creek farm in North Carolina's Blue Ridge Mountains. The Crazy quilt has many embroidered symbols: hearts, baskets, flowers, stars, and potted plants. In the center of the couple is a block with an embroidered heart placed below the word, "Grandma.". Ira James Hill was born in the area in 1855 to Hiram and Cynthia Hill. In the 1870 Federal Census, he was listed as age sixteen and "At Home" meaning he was still helping on the family farm. Ira Hill was thirty when he met and couted Nancy. They married in 1885 and and took up farming in the sparsely populated Prathers Creek Township in Alleghany County where they remained for the remainder of their lives. On the postcard's verso is written, "Uncle Ira and Aunt Nan Hill."

-- With permission of the publisher, excerpted from Janet E. Finley, Quilts in EveryDay Life 1855-1955 (Schiffer Publishing, 2012).