1900-1909

Janet E. Finley Collection of Quilt History Photographs

Cabinet Card c. 1902
Photographer: Unknown
Size: 4.25" x 6.5"

Basil H. Stewart and his second wife, Mary, pose with their grandchildren, Wallen, age 4, and Eva, age 1. Basil and his first wife, Susan M. Rayneer, were married in 1875 and had two children, Alice (born 1879) and Joe. By 1900, Basil, a widowed fruit agent, had married Mary. In the 1910 Federal Census, he was listed as a clerk in a store in Rosine, Kentucky. The grandchildren belonged to their daughter, Alice Duylos. In addition to having a Crazy quilt hanging as the backdrop for their photograph, the family uses another quilt to cover the dirt ground. This second quilt, heavily quilted and showing what is probably its backside, was in all probability regarded as a utitility quilt as opposed to the Crazy quilt displaying the fancywork skills of its maker, most likely Mary. There are embroidered roosters, a tea pot, flowers, and a bird on a branch seen partially behind Basil's head. Rosine is a small hamlet in rural western Kentucky famous for being the home of Bill Monroe, who became known as "The Father of Bluegrass."

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