Fugitives

This is another of my graduation quilts that I came across during the recent 'time of great cleaning'. I was actually making room in a cedar chest to put some things away, when I came across it and decided to take a closer look.

It is a very bright 'cheddar' and red with jadeite green and dark teal stars.

(Miss Ruth E Kruse)

I had never noticed that this quilt is dated and 'signed' by my Aunt Ruth!

(December 7, 1923 - Aunt Ruth was 26 years old)

I have not inspected all of them, but I believe that this is the only quilt that I have, with a date.

I love the colors in this quilt - at least the ones that still remain...

I know that fabric dyes have not always been stable. And I know that light is not good for quilts. (And all my cedar chests are lined in foil to prevent wood acids from damaging the linens.) But it fascinates me how the dyes in this quilt have such varied amounts of color remaining!

In this block, the dark fabric in the star points is pretty well still dark.

In this one, the dark fabric is pretty much all... not dark any longer.

And in this one, they are pretty evenly split between badly faded and not so much.

And this photo shows that the border piece on one side is faded, although the half star block conjoining it (right side in the photo) looks as if there is no dye loss!

I would expect to see fading where it was exposed to the light, but there doesn't seem to be any rhyme nor reason to the distribution of fading in this quilt.

But, the red and the bright orange seem as bright as they were when they were new!

I think that I need to go through the rest of my cedar chests to see if there are any other treasures that I have forgotten!

Club Doings

Yesterday, I received an email from a woman who was trying to research a photo of ladies around a dining table, marked "Just-a-Mere Club, Arkansas City, KS 3-31-1930-something". She had come across this post that was spurred by an article in the New Yorker Magazine.

The email got me thinking, again, about the ladies clubs in the last century, and these books:

I found these in the family flotsam and jetsam.

They are the Secretary's books from the D.M.C. Club of Greensburg, Kansas. Another one of the many 'ladies clubs' of that era.

They are the official minutes of the meetings, beginning with December 29, 1921 (not the beginning of the club, just the first entry in the oldest book) and ending with December 8, 1950. Not the end of the club, either. Just the last entry in these books.

My Great Aunt Ruth was a member of the club (beginning 12/19/1945, according to the minutes). No idea how they ended up in our family archives, because I don't see in the records where Aunt Ruth was ever the club secretary.

Mostly, the secretary was Myrtle Linegar...

...pictured here on a Christmas card with her twin sister. (Can't tell you which is Myrtle and which is her sister...)

The pages in one book are very fragile (1925 through 1929) and some of the entries are very brief. Often with just the day and date of the meeting, the Hostess name and roll call topic, (current events was a popular one, as well as gardening tips. One was Irish jokes...) and a mention of the activity of the day. Often it was, "An enjoyable afternoon was spent with fancy work and conversation". It seems that taking pictures was another popular activity during the 1920's, sometimes described as 'kodaking'.

During the war years of the '40's, making items for hospitalized soldiers was a focus, but mostly the activities were social. And always food. From 'delightful luncheons' to cook-outs of 'weenie sandwiches', there was always food!

Often, meetings would be cancelled during the 'busy times of harvest' in June and July, or due to 'bad roads' in the winter.

The club membership was about 8 or 10 in the '20's and rose to almost 30 in 1950. I think it kept growing, because I remember going to holiday meetings when I was a child in the early '60's that were held at the VFW hall due to the size of the group.

My original thought was to transcribe the minutes. I got through 1922, but some of the pencil writing is very tiring to decipher, so I stopped transcribing and just read. Many of the member names are familiar to me as friends of Aunt Ruth, although some of the secretaries referred to members by first name, and others used a more formal "Mrs. R.A. Linegar" which is harder for me to keep sorted out. Some even used 'Mesdames Linegar and Gregory'.

I am going to try again this weekend. My eyes just work better during the day with natural light. Some of the pages seem like they could crumble to dust at any minute, so I don't want to wait too long.

Maybe I will check into voice recognition software. Then I could read the minutes aloud and then just edit.

I am sure Myrtle would have appreciated that kind of technology!

Veteran's Day Eve

Since tomorrow is Veteran's Day, (and Dearest Sister's turn to post, in our tag team blogging adventure) I thought I would share a bit of ephemera from the family flotsam and jetsam.

This photo is a post card that was in a stack of vintage cards that came from my Aunt Ruth's house. Most of them are correspondence addressed to her from friends, (sent with a penny stamp).

On the back of this one, it just says, "From Henry Newton Chase To Miss Ruth Kruse".

I did not recall seeing his name in her diary of 1916, so I was thinking of ways that I could research who he might be, but then I remembered the magic of Google! Crossing my fingers, I entered his name and this entry was in the first two or three that popped up. Galena, KS is a couple of hundred miles from Greensburg, but it certainly seems likely that it could be a match.

CHASE, HENRY NEWTON, seaman, second class, United States Navy.
Enlisted: St. Louis, Mo., June 5, 1917.
Died: U. S. S. Mercy, October 9, 1918.
Cause: Influenza.
Next of kin: Father, Elmer Chase, 115 Short Street, Galena, Kans.

He apparently enlisted soon after the US entered the war and died from the flu a month before the armistice was signed.

Aunt Ruth kept his photo for a long time. Maybe he was just an acquaintance, or maybe a special acquaintance. Of course, it is too late to ask her.

On Veteran's Day, this year, we remember him and the many thousands of other young men and women who have served their country.

Those that came home, and those that didn't.

Moving From Collector to Creator

I have always loved quilts. For my high school graduation gift, I asked my mother to give me money to buy quilts from my Uncle Don.  Dearest Sister had gotten contact lenses for her graduation two years earlier, which were quite expensive in those days, so I got $250 to buy family treasures!

Uncle Don and Aunt Ruth lived in the house my Great Grandfather built and all the family linen treasures were still in bureau drawers, storage closets and the attic of the huge, three story house. Aunt Ruth was in a nursing home after a debilitating stroke and Uncle Don’s health was failing. I knew that he could use the money and even though he tried to refuse it and just give me the things I asked for, I made him accept the check. Also, so no one could say I took advantage of the soft spot that I knew Uncle Don always had for me.

The following spring, the house and the entire contents were sold at auction while I was studying abroad, so I have always been glad that I took the opportunity to ask for the quilts when I did.

This is one of the quilts that I got.

It is my understanding that it was made by my Aunt Ruth, from new yard goods. It was a project that she worked on while she was with my grandmother in the hospital during my grandmother’s final illness in the late 40's. It is the one of the few family quilts that I recall seeing that was not made predominately from scraps or feedsacks.

The finish of the fabric is a polished sateen.

The quilting is done in a small grid with the applique pieces outlined.

This is not one of the quilts that we pulled out of the cabinet in the winter to sleep under!


This one was!

I always refer to this one as a ‘postage stamp’ quilt because of the small pieces, but I am not sure if that is what other people would call it.

When I was taking the photos, I thought that I should put something in for size reference, so I took off my ring and put it on the blue plaid square. The ring is about 3/4" diameter, so the pieces are about an inch square.  This quilt shows the years of wear and laundry, but it is still impressive, I think.

In 1978, I signed up for a quilt class, but was not able to continue beyond the first lesson or two. A week ago, I signed up for a basic piecing class at a local quilt shop. It starts in November, so I have a couple of months of anticipation.

I hope this time next year, I can call myself a quilter, instead of just a wannabe!

Flotsam and Jetsam

Over the years, I have become the Keeper of some of the flotsam and jetsam of our family that has floated down through the years. I became the keeper mostly because I lived in the same house for 16 years and it had lots of storage space. And I lived close to my mother who was the original Keeper.

Mostly it consists of boxes of things that were stored for years, perhaps by the original owner; photographs, cancelled checks, school books, various deeds and agricultural loan documents, miscellaneous receipts, newspaper articles etc.

Periodically, I go through a box here and there and decide who in the family might appreciate having something (or more likely, who can I talk into taking something away!) Whenever the sibs or nieces come to visit, I often have a little packet of photos and documents that are particularly relevant to their branch of the tree to send home with them.

Once in a while, I find something that I have never noticed or realized I had.

This is the wedding photo of my Aunt Ruth and Uncle Don. She is my mother's aunt, my grandfather's youngest sister. She was born in 1897 and she was married to Uncle Don in 1927.

A few weeks ago, I found this:

It is a tablet that probably was meant to serve as a note pad. An early pre-courser to the spiral pocket notebook. I probably saw this notebook and assumed that it had columns of cattle feed costs and notations of how many acres were in pasture at some point in time.

Imagine my surprise -

Aunt Ruth used it as a diary in 1916!

Many entries are pretty typical of most 19 year old girls - boys, parties and her friends that were married and having babies. She wrote intermittently, always apologising for "neglecting you". In the first entry, she mentions George Fuller. In the last entry, eight months later, he is not to be heard from.

The last entry:

August 8. 1916. Tuesday

"It sure has been a long time since I have written to you but I have sure been busy. I have been happy, tho. Chas came up last Sunday and we went to HIS HOME and his Aunt & Uncle and Cousins were there and Earl & Anna and Frank & Sarah and we had ice cream and cake and Anna & Chas & Lawrence played and Ruth & Irene sang and I got weighed. I weigh 133 lbs. And in the evening we went home with Anna & Earl and spent the evening with them. Coming home Chas told me a lot of things about his life but I care for him more every time I am with him."

"He made a date for tomorrow night. I wish it was tonight but I believe it is going to rain."

"Mabel & Norris was married July. 28 at Dodge City. I guess they are happy.
Well Anna & Mabel are both married - it is my turn next"

The last entry made me a little sad when I read it. It would be 10 years before Aunt Ruth was married and not until after her father died. Before that time, her lot was to help run her parents house on the farm and care for her grandmother. Because she "stayed home" Aunt Ruth inherited the house, a rural Victorian mansion really, built at the turn of the century which became terribly run-down in later years.

During my visit with Dear Aunt last month, I asked her about the timing of the marriage and if it was significant that Great Grandfather had passed away before Aunt Ruth married. She didn't remember exactly, but she said "some people were jealous of Aunt Ruth because she was 'given everything', but really, do you think she chose that life? Her place was to stay home and take care of her grandmother. I don't suppose there was any question of whether she would marry!" Dear Aunt said that her dad (my grandfather) always said that Aunt Ruth married Uncle Don because he was the only one who would put up with her responsibilities.

After they were married, Uncle Don moved into his in-laws' home and Aunt Ruth continued as the dutiful daughter. A couple of times Uncle Don's father tried to set him up in a farming operation, but it never lasted very long. After all, Aunt Ruth was needed at home.