The seven quilts presented in this essay were made
in the
Carolina
Piedmont between the mid-nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries.
Part of a collection of sixteen quilts, they once belonged to
Mary
Louisa Snoddy Black (1860-1927), who lived her entire life in Spartanburg
County, South Carolina.
Collections of family quilts are not unusual. What gives these special
significance is their age, provenance, and the attention Mary Black
devoted to ensuring that the names and relations of the makers would
be remembered. The number of quilts and the care with which they were
labeled suggests that she thought of them as a collection, the culmination
of the work of many hands. Sometime in the mid-1920s, Mary met with
her two adult daughters,
Rosa and
Mary Kate, and passed along information
about the quilts and quiltmakers, which were sewn, as small slips of
paper, onto each quilt.
As the historical archaeologist
James
Deetz urged, those "small things forgotten," the ordinary
objects that remain from past generations, must be examined in "new
and imaginative ways" to achieve "a different appreciation
for what life is today, and was in the past." When interpreted
thoughtfully and alongside other historical materials, Mary Black's
collection can convey the values and experiences of her family, beginning
with the arrival of her
great-grandparents
in the Carolinas in 1773 and continuing through her descendants.
