06/23/2021
Ooo, a quilt of many stories! The story about the maker, the story about her daughter who she made it for, and a story about the fabric. We know a little. I wonder what we don't know? Quilts and textiles, from the past and present, are often filled with stories about life, people, circumstances, and events. Do you have a quilt story to share?
Mary Ann Grosh was the third of nine children of Joseph Conrad and Magdalena Greiner Grosh. In 1838 the Grosh family loaded up its belongings and left Warwick, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, in a large covered wagon pulled by four horses to begin a new life in Ohio. Mary Ann was four years old at the time. In 1860 she married Jacob Stoner, a carpenter, in her parents’ home.
According to family tradition, Mary Ann made this quilt for her second daughter, Anise Barbara Stoner, in honor of her marriage to Justus Fox on September 6, 1884. The date 1887 is quilted into the center hexagon of the quilt, which might suggest that its construction took place over a period of at least two or three years.
The large number of different printed fabrics in a quilt is often an indication of a charm quilt, one in which each fabric is used only once. There are only a handful of repeats in this quilt, which suggests that the maker, indeed, intended this to be a charm quilt.
The fabrics include a variety of print styles and colors from the 1870s and 1880s. Mary Ann also included a few earlier prints from the 1840s, which she may have inherited from her mother. Strategically placed in one corner is a piece of fabric printed with the date “1776,” a souvenir of the nation’s Centennial celebration of 1876.
