Names tell history of families
Just like works of art, quilts and their patterns can help tell a story.
One quilt recently donated to the Leelanau Historical Society (LHS) and Museum features carefully embroidered names of pioneering families that lived in the area for generations — many of which still reside in Leelanau County today.
Jane (Johnson) Boursaw and her sister- in-law, Laura Johnson, brought the quilt to the museum on Feb. 19, and LHS staff have been working to catalog and archive information from it ever since. The fabric has 56 squares in total with 20 names on the wheels, as well as one name in the center of each wheel.
Boursaw said she discovered the quilt tucked away as she was cleaning out her mother’s closet in 2016, adding that she remembers seeing it laying on her parents bed as a child. It didn’t take Boursaw long after finding it to realize that the quilt included her own family member names, as well as a number of common family names from Bingham and Suttons Bay.
Because so many of the names are from Leelanau County, Boursaw said she felt it was the right time to return the quilt back home.
“I remember seeing this quilt as a kid, and back then, it didn’t really mean that much to me, but I always thought it was cool… It’s like the journey home for the quilt,” Boursaw said. “Basically, this is like 100 years in the making. I think it was probably in mom’s linen closet for at least 50 years.”
Interestingly, in the same closet, Boursaw said she also found a large pack of documents and letters from the Army with all the information of when Frank Edgecomb, Boursaw’s grandmother Stella’s first husband, died in World War I. The discovery of the documents, along with the quilt, opened Boursaw up to history about her family and more.
“When you clean your parents house out, be sure to look in all the bags, you never know what you could find,” Boursaw said. “The quilt was found in a brown paper bag.”
Kim Kelderhouse, Leelanau Historical Society executive director, said the quilt, which she believes was made in the 1920s, is exciting to see in person after initially first reading about it via social media a couple of years ago. In the months ahead, Kelderhouse and LHS staff will continue to piece together the names and family genealogy connections to eventually showcase on display to the public.
“It’s a mystery we’re going to try to solve and have an explanation for, so that’s always fun. A lot of them are Bingham and Suttons Bay names… But there’s certainly some names that we don’t recognize. I’m thinking it (the quilt) was some kind of community effort because you can see the difference in the writing, the thickness of the threads,” Kelderhouse said. “Others might have the piece of the puzzle that connects it all. The more we share the story, some piece of the puzzle will help clarify more. It’s a big project but an exciting one.”
Elizabeth Adams, LHS engagement and collections manager, has been researching connections to the quilt and its names, and recently found old articles from the Leelanau Enterprise archives possibly tied to it. In the Feb. 16 1928 Enterprise edition, county news reported that a group called the “Cemetery Circle” made and auctioned off a quilt to “sell for the benefit of the cemetery fund (Maple Grove).” Nellie (Edgecomb) Strohm, one of the many names listed on the quilt, was Boursaw’s grandmother’s sister-in-law who married a Strohm from Leelanau County. Nellie was the president of the Cemetery Circle group, and was very active in civic and community affairs in the region.
“Any of the women that still bear their maiden names, we know it was before their marriage,” Kelderhouse said. “There’s a similar quilt out on Old Mission that is strictly just Old Mission names, so this style is not unknown or uncommon… But I’m thinking it’s well used because there’s some wear and some staining, and there’s no edge. So somebody used it and somebody loved it, which wasn’t always the case with quilts. Sometimes they made them and it was only put on the bed to look pretty and then you folded it up and set it to the side and didn’t really use it.”
Boursaw said she thinks the quilt originated from Nellie, but also heard that her father, Walter Johnson, who was Stella and Lester Johnson’s son, won the quilt in a raffle.
“My question is why would they raffle this quilt in particular,” Boursaw said. “It’s very historic.”
Some of the prominent family names found on the fabric include the Bahles, Martinsons, Reincke, Palmer, and Fort, among others. Not every name is from the Suttons Bay and Bingham township area though. For example, the Viskochil family, also printed on the fabric, were from the Maple City and Cedar area, eventually marrying into the Charter family of Northport.
“These were a lot of the early families, very influential in the community,” Adams said.
LHS is looking for volunteers to help transcribe all 1,176 names on the quilt and to help organize information that will be indexed and put online. If interested in assisting with the process, contact Kelderhouse at [email protected] or call 231-256-7475.
