Quilt (Pieced quilt, Friendship)

Description

This friendship signature quilt is made of Turkey red calico and white cotton checkerboard pieced blocks configured within a diamond lattice pattern. There is quilting in a cross-pattern in the red squares and in a four-lobed, clover-esque shape within the white squares of the checkerboard blocks. It was made by a member of the prominent Clayton family in the Delaware Valley during the 1840s. Names of forty-four family members, and occasionally the words “Forget me not” and “Remember Me,” are inked within the central square of each diamond block. Several of the men listed were active in Delaware and United States politics, including John M. Clayton, a senator known for pushing an agenda of moderation in the mid-nineteenth century. Similar colors and patterns are seen across signature quilts from this region and time period. 2000.0064 is another example of a signature quilt made in the Delaware Valley. For women in the nineteenth-century, these quilts acted as a form of record keeping and thus were often diligently cared for and maintained.