New Fund Honors Retiring Curator through Contemporary Collecting to Tell the Full New England Story

by KRISTIN SERVISON Historic New England Trustee and Chair of the Collections Committee

Artifacts and archival materials are powerful steppingstones to understanding social history, and Historic New England's collections are at the heart of our site experiences, public programs, and research.

We are committed to growing our world-class collections to better reflect the diverse stories of those who lived, worked, and created in this region. Telling these holistic stories requires collaboration with new communities, artists, and makers with a wide range of backgrounds, racial identities, and cultural affiliations who can help us build collections that tell fuller stories about culture, taste, migration, trade, and labor in New England. Through this outreach we are building a collection that future generations will depend on to understand New England’s full and inclusive history.

Senior Curator of Collections Nancy Carlisle, who retired at the end of 2022 after thirty-five years with Historic New England, has been a leading advocate for the expansion of our collections. To honor her work and commitment to collecting artifacts and archival materials that share the multitude of stories, the Nancy Carlisle Collections Acquisition and Care Fund has been established to support the purchase of objects from contemporary artists, crafters, makers, and communities to ensure our collections are expansive, inclusive, and accessible to everyone.

Please consider honoring Nancy and supporting this important work. To make a gift, visit www.

HistoricNewEngland.org/Carlisle or send your gift to Nancy Carlisle Collections

Acquisition and Care Fund, Historic New England, 151 Essex Street, Haverhill, MA 01832.

Interested in discovering more about Historic New England’s collections? Visit https://www. historicnewengland.org/explore/ collections-access/.

by MARINA NYE

Marina Nye is a PhD candidate in history at the University of California, Los Angeles. Her dissertation explores the different forms of sartorial reuse and repurposing in eighteenth-century North America. She is an assistant curatorial researcher at the Autry Museum and a 2022-23 fellow at the Washington Library at Mount Vernon.

In the late nineteenth century, historian and philanthropist Jane Norton Wigglesworth Grew made a patchwork quilt to memorialize the lives of twenty different colonial women. Grew sewed the quilt with scraps of fabric that were previously owned by these women. The quilt offers us a window into the histories of the women whose lives are woven into its very fabric.

Grew was born into an affluent Boston family on November 11, 1836. As a child, she attended Professor Torrey’s private school for girls where she learned her love for needlework and history. Grew took a great interest in education and donated to schools in the

South. For twenty-four years Grew served as the director of the Elizabeth Peabody House Association which aided poor families in Boston. At the age of twenty-seven she married Henry Sturgis Grew, a successful mill owner and banker. Together they had six children. Their daughter Jane Norton Grew would go on to marry John Pierpont Morgan Jr., the son of the famous banker.

Jane Norton Wigglesworth Grew had a passion for her own colonial heritage. She was a proud member of the Massachusetts Society of Colonial Dames from 1899 until her death in 1920. She was also a member of the New England Historic Genealogical Society as her roots in the region could be traced back to the seventeenth century. As a part of her fascination with history, Grew actively preserved artifacts. Upon her death, her estate donated approximately 180 objects to Historic New England so they could be preserved for future generations. This patchwork quilt is among the donated items in the collection.

The quilt was a multigenerational project. Most of the fabric fragments were woven in the eighteenth century. Grew’s mother and grandmother, Henrietta May Goddard Wigglesworth (1805-1895) and Lucretia May Dana (1773-1866), likely acquired the fragments during their lifetime. Grew inherited the scraps and sewed them into the quilt.

The quilt held tremendous value to Grew. It reflected her deep interest in preserving American colonial heritage. Affluent nineteenth-century women like Grew made it their mission to revive colonial traditions and stories in order to illuminate the achievements of their female ancestors. Grew replicated the colonial tradition of needlework while simultaneously recording the material histories of colonial women. The time required to sew the quilt also suggests its sentimental value. The various thread colors used (yellow, black, beige, green, and white) indicate that Grew worked on the quilt for multiple years. When a quilt features different thread colors, it often means that the seamstress worked on the quilt over a period of time and used whatever thread she had on hand. Finally, the quilt is in excellent condition. In the midnineteenth century, Grew displayed the patchwork quilt as upholstery on a pillow. However, the pillow was more often admired than used since the textile has very little wear and tear. It was a piece of material history that she mindfully preserved.

Why did Grew include these twenty women? The quilt pays homage to the legacy of prominent colonial New England women that she admired. Carefully pinned to each scrap of fabric is a piece of paper that details the fabric’s use, the year, and the woman who owned it. With this information, the quilt memorializes the women who once owned the fragments and offers a valuable glimpse into their lives. For example, multiple wedding dress fragments are incorporated into the quilt, such as the gowns worn by Madam Amory (Katherine Greene Amory), Mrs. Thomas Dennie (Sarah Bryant Dennie), and Mrs. Mansfield (first name unknown). The preservation of these wedding gown fragments suggests the significance of marriage to New England society. Beyond sentimental value, these fragments reflected a social achievement. In the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a prosperous marriage was crucial for affluent women like Amory, Dennie, and Mansfield.

The curtain fragments owned by Mrs. Samuel Appleton (Mary Lekain Gore Appleton) and Mrs. Joseph Tilden (Sarah Parker Tilden) suggest the central role fabric played in colonial life. Textiles were especially important to Appleton and Tilden because they came from prominent merchant families that sold fabric. Both families would have displayed these expensive curtains in their home as a demonstration of wealth. The Appletons even featured their curtains in a silhouette art piece. Both Tilden and Appleton preserved their expensive upholstery which suggests these objects were valuable to them.

In addition, Grew’s quilt pays tribute to women from famous revolutionary families, like Martha Washington and Dorothy Quincy Hancock (as their names appear on the quilt). Scraps previously owned by Washington and Hancock are woven into the quilt. Textiles owned by famous women held sentimental and monetary value because many Americans wanted a piece of America’s legacy through sartorial tokens. These materials were symbolic of the Revolution and the founding of the country.

Grew’s quilt also incorporates lesser-known female figures. Mrs. Samuel Bradlee’s (Mary Andrus) fragment was likely from a dress she wore during the later years of her life (1700-1796). All five of her children, David, Josiah, Thomas, Nathaniel, and Sarah played important roles in the country’s founding as participants in the Boston Tea Party. Her daughter, Sarah, was even dubbed as the mother of the Boston Tea Party. Bradlee’s dress was likely incorporated in the quilt to pay tribute to her maternal skill in raising republican children. The quilt serves as a memorial to the women who helped build the nation.

While the quilt names twenty different women, many other unnamed women were involved in its creation. Before the textiles formed a quilt, they passed through the hands of hundreds of unknown people. Spinners, weavers, seamstresses, and upholsters touched the fabric. Once the fabric was worn or displayed, it was sold, gifted, inherited, reused, or repurposed by other hands. It is impossible to determine how many people are interwoven into the story of the quilt. However, the quilt allows us a glimpse at the true reach of one object. Hundreds of people, artisans, merchants, consumers, and historians contributed to its existence.

Jane Norton Wigglesworth Grew created a patchwork quilt that memorialized colonial women’s achievements, values, and traditions in American history. In so doing, she recorded her identity and the history of prominent colonial women with a needle and a thread.