ISSN 2167-8812

Open Inquiry Archive

Vol. 1, No. 8 (2012)

The Anna Tuels Quilt in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, CT:  Stylistic, Technical, and Historical Considerations

 By

Lilian H. Zirpolo

In 2008-2009 the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, Connecticut, hosted an exhibition titled Who Was Anna Tuels? Quilt Stories, 1750-1900.[Note 1]  The exhibition centered on the Anna Tuels Quilt (Fig. 1—[click on second figure within link])* in the museum’s permanent collection, and focused on quilts with an ownership history.  The bits of information available on these and other quilts can often reveal much about the women who created them, the occasions that prompted the making of the quilts, and the history of the patterns and textiles they used.  This essay attempts to employ some of those bits of information to reconstruct the circumstances of the making of the Anna Tuels Quilt and place it within its historical context.  It also seeks to answer the question posed by the Wadsworth Atheneum curators—who was Anna Tuels?—and to reveal the identity of the quilt’s maker.

Visual Aspects

The Anna Tuels Quilt is the earliest surviving medallion patchwork quilt to have been created in the United States. The curators of the Wadsworth Atheneum have assumed that it was produced in Maine, where it was found, though, as will be discussed below, it was most likely created in Marshfield, Massachusetts.  The quilt measures 86 x 81 inches, roughly the size of a double bed. A circular pieced medallion enclosed in a square is in the center, a pattern that many see as a precursor to the Dresden Plate block that was highly popular in the 1920s and 1930s.  An appliquéd heart punctuates each of the square’s corners, while an appliquéd inscription surrounds the medallion.  It reads, “Anna Tuels her bed quilt given to her by her mother in the year Au 23, 1785.”  The rest of the quilt features patchwork squares, each created by sewing together four equilateral triangles of light and dark colored fabrics.  This pattern is called the Yankee Puzzle, today also known as the Hourglass or Bowtie square.  More appliquéd hearts are seen at each corner of the quilt’s pieced section.  A sizable border in solid pink quilted in an elaborate feathered vine motif adds the final touch.[2]  That the border is made of a solid fabric allows for the quilted stitches to be seen quite clearly.  Wool plaid blanketing serves as the backing, which might have been woven by the quilter herself since in New England weaving was a common activity among women.[3]

That the Anna Tuels Quilt includes the recipient’s name is significant.  In the eighteenth century, laws prevented married women from owning property.[4]  It was not until the following century that statutes were passed allowing married women to control the profits of their own labor and their real and personal properties.  At this time, women were also granted the right to sign contracts, participate in lawsuits, and draw their own wills.[5] Stitching or appliquéing a woman’s name or initials onto quilts at a time when these laws were nonexistent was a way for her to mark these items as her own.  The only things women could claim as theirs were linens and household articles, such as bridal chests, tableware, and silver. Women’s names or initials, in fact, also figure on some of these other items.[6]

The medallion or frame-center patchwork quilt was a type that was very popular in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in both North America and Northern Europe. The earliest documented patchwork quilt in England (Fig. 2) is of this kind.  It dates to 1718 and is currently in the York Quilt Museum and Gallery in Peasholme Green (66 ½ x 73 inches).  The maker, who included her initials E.H. above the central medallion along with the date of execution, was more ambitious than the maker of the Anna Tuels Quilt in that her patchwork and appliqué work are more varied and complex.   Birds, hearts, flowers, deer, and other appliquéd creatures coexist with Yankee Puzzle, Four-Square, Nine-Square, Star, Square-in-a-Square, and Crisscross patterns.  The backing is also pieced, the scraps of fabrics sewn together in a haphazard way.  This quilt was owned by the Brown family of Aldbourne, Wiltshire, until 2000 when it was bought at auction by the York Quilt Museum and Gallery.

We also find medallion patchwork quilts in the Netherlands.  In the Openluchtmuseum in Arnhem is an example dated 1844 (80.31 x 79.1 inches, Fig. 3) created by Annechien Jans Kremer.[7]  Its central medallion consists of a pieced eight-pointed star, its center embroidered with Annechien’s initials (A.J.K.) and the date of the quilt’s execution. Yankee Puzzle squares fill the rest of the quilt top, while larger Yankee Puzzles set on point create the border.  The Openluchtmuseum site indicates that Annechien created the quilt on the occasion of her marriage. This, however, is incorrect since genealogical records indicate that she did not marry until 1849.  Her husband was Berend Menses Starke.[8]  Annechien was seventeen in 1844 and perhaps she created this quilt as part of her trousseau.  It was common practice among teenaged girls of the era to create quilts and other linens in preparation for their future marriage and establishment of a new home.

The North American colonies followed the tastes of Europe, and this is reflected in early eighteenth-century North American quilt production.  The 1726 quilt in the McCord Museum at McGill University in Montreal (81 ½ x 77 ½ inches, Fig. 4), the earliest dated quilt in North America though perhaps created in England, also features this medallion patchwork style.  The name of the maker is unknown, though her appliquéd initials I.N.and the 1726 date are present in a rectangular patch directly below the medallion.  This example is more closely related in style to the Anna Tuels Quilt in that the patchwork consists exclusively of Yankee Puzzle squares.  Here, too, a large border enframes the quilt.  This maker, however, left the layers unquilted.[9] The backing is composed of a large piece of striped cloth, with two strips added at the top and one square patch on the upper left side.  The striped fabric is then enframed by the same cloth used to create the border surrounding the quilt top.

An early nineteenth-century North American example is the Catharine Ann Penniman Bradford Quilt, currently in a private collection in Wisconsin. This quilt, which dates to 1825, includes a large embroidered vase and flowers as the central medallion.  The rest of the quilt is composed of Yankee Puzzle squares.  A T-shaped drop panel was added to accommodate the posts at the foot of early nineteenth-century beds.  Catharine was from Braintree (now Quincy), Massachusetts. She was born in 1778 to William Penniman, whose shipyard produced the frigate Confederacy for the U.S. government, and which became one of the main British targets during the War of 1812.  In 1793, Catharine married Charles Bradford, a Mayflower descendant whose great-grandfather was the first governor of Plymouth Colony.  She made the quilt for her daughter and namesake as a gift on the occasion of her wedding to Seraphim Masi that took place in 1825. [10]

Quilts were created for many different reasons, often as a rite of passage or to mark a major event in someone’s life.  Of the quilts discussed above, one was created by a young woman to add to her bridal chest for use in her future home after her marriage.  Another was made by a mother to give to her daughter as a wedding gift.  The Anna Tuels Quilt has been considered by some to be a quilt made to celebrate her marriage.  As we will see, this does not seem to have been the case.  Anna’s wedding did not take place until almost a decade later.

Origins of the Anna Tuels Quilt Medallion Patchwork Style

Colleen R. Callahan, Curator of Textiles at the Valentine Museum in Richmond, Virginia, makes a compelling argument for tracing the origins of the medallion patchwork quilt type to palampores imported into Northern Europe from India (Fig. 5).[11]  Palampores are wholecloth chintz bedcovers that were manufactured in India for a Northern European market and which incorporated European and Asian printed motifs.  Tulips and roses often comingled with peacocks, elephants, and invented exotic animals.  The characteristic design of palampores was a central medallion surrounded by a flowered field, four large corner motifs visually related to the medallion, and a substantial border often filled with flowered and leafed vines.  These elements correspond, albeit loosely, to the elements within the medallion patchwork quilts.  The central medallion and hearts appliquéd onto the corners of the patchwork field in the Anna Tuels Quilt would correspond to the central and corner motifs seen in these Indian palampores, the Yankee Puzzle patchwork would relate to the busy floral fields surrounding the medallion, while the border, which is quilted with a feathered vine motif, would reflect the vines found in the wide borders of the Indian prototypes.

In some cases the central medallion featured compass motifs.  The York Quilt’s central medallion presents an eight-pointed star that is repeated at each of the corners in smaller dimensions.  This eight-pointed star is the same as those in surveyor’s compasses, also known as circumferentors, used to measure horizontal angles for cartographic purposes.  These instruments were commonly used in the eighteenth century and, in fact, one such instrument is featured in the Cyclopaedia published in London by Ephraim Chambers in 1728, along with an illustration (Fig. 6).[12]  The pattern that forms the medallion of the McCord Quilt stems from eighteenth century mariner’s compasses, several examples of which are preserved in the National Maritime Museum in London.[13]

The beginning of the eighteenth century had marked the end of the Age of Exploration when new trade routes were discovered and greater knowledge of the world was gained.  The resulting technological advances allowed the possibility of ease of travel by sea to different parts of the world, including the newly discovered lands. Seafaring and cartography were two commonplace occupations of the era, so it is not surprising that the instruments used in these tasks would serve as sources of inspiration for quilters.  It would also not be surprising to find that the makers of the quilts with these motifs might have been the wives of sailors.

Some of the appliqué motifs found in quilts of the era were taken from furniture design.  The York Museum Quilt features at each corner a tulip and vine motif that was quite common in carved European and American wood furniture.  The motif is seen as early as the seventeenth century in British oak coffers and mule chests.  It also appears in Hadley bridal chests, typical American creations made in Hadley, Massachusetts, and its vicinity in the late 1600s and early 1700s.  The roots of the patterns seen in the Hadley pieces are in British low-relief carved furnishings.[14]

Quilting Technique

The technique used by the maker of the Anna Tuels Quilt was English paper-piecing, also known as paper-template piecing or piecing-over-papers.  This technique entails the cutting of paper recycled from letters and discarded printed materials into triangles and other shapes and then wrapping and tacking pieces of fabric around them.  Once all of the patches are prepared in this manner, they are sewn together using a whipstitch (an overcast stitch) through the back folds of the fabrics.  The paper pieces of the eighteenth century quilts that utilized this technique would be left in place to provide stability.  This method has been a blessing in terms of conservation as the paper has protected the fabrics from extensive damage.  Also, the paper can sometimes provide clues as to the date of the quilt and on the quilter’s social station, education, and other such matters.

The paper templates are usually concealed due to the fact that the layers are quilted together to prevent shifting.  Since the McCord Museum Quilt was left unquilted by its anonymous maker, the museum’s textile curators were able to lift the backing during conservation work to study the paper fragments.  These were pieces cut from letters, a handwriting copybook, a Latin text, and a page with legal regulations pertaining to the production of malt.  What these fragments suggest is that the maker of the McCord Quilt was a woman of high standing who had access to Latin texts and therefore she was well-educated, and that her husband or father may have been involved in the lucrative business of brewing or distilling.

The York Museum Quilt was submitted to radiography.  Unfortunately, nothing was revealed in terms of the information the paper pieces might provide about the maker.  And the Anna Tuels Quilt has not been examined utilizing radiography techniques and, therefore, any clues offered by its paper templates remain hidden.

Clues Provided by the Fabrics

The fabrics used for the Anna Tuels quilt top are plain and patterned linens, corduroys, silks, and printed cottons.  The border is glazed wool. At the time when the quilt was created, fabrics were not as readily available as in later centuries, nor as affordable.  Eighteenth-century American quilters had to use fabrics that were either imported from England or taken from old clothes and bed linens.  For this reason, these quilts were made from several different fabric types, unlike most quilts of today which are usually created with cotton material.  Many of the eighteenth-century fabrics available to quilters were dress and upholstery fabrics.

The Anna Tuels quilt was pieced from a variety of cloths of these two sorts.  Some of these fabrics had rather unusual names, like callimanco, fleuret, and tapizadoe.[15]  Callimanco was a glazed worsted that was brightly colored and often decorated with stripes, birds, or flowers.  Fleuret was woven with wool warp and silk weft, and tapizadoe was a brilliantly colored worsted with polychrome brocaded flowers.  All three were produced in Norwich, England, though callimanco was also manufactured in London.[16]

These were costly fabrics that only the wealthy could afford and which were often the object of thievery.  In 1734, for example, Elizabeth and John Fulks walked into the store of Marcus Khul on Market Street, Philadelphia, and stole several items of clothing, some handkerchiefs, and a length of callimanco, described in the Pennsylvania Gazette as having “narrow stripes of red, green, blue, and two stripes of yellow.”[17]  This means that the maker of the Anna Tuels Quilt was from a well-to-do family as she could afford these costly imported textiles.[18]

Not only were these cloths shipped from England by merchants, but, in many instances, a wealthy family patriarch would travel to England on business and bring back a length of fabric for his wife or daughter.  The central medallion of the Catharine Ann Penniman Bradford Quilt, which is silk, was brought home from England by her husband, Charles Bradford.  The medallion may already have been embroidered with the flowers and vase motif when Charles purchased it.  This is suggested by the fact that the stitching is inconsistent with that found in the other panels and embroideries on the quilt.  Catharine, however, was sure to add her name to the medallion, directly below the vase.[19]

The Wadsworth Atheneum 2008-2009 exhibition included a Hexagon Mosaic Quilt created in 1794 by Sarah Ewalt Spencer, a resident of Bedford, Pennsylvania.  The quilt is the earliest hexagon mosaic quilt created in America, and the fabrics from which it was made include pieces from the maker’s wedding dress and dresses at one time owned by well-known women of her day, such as Martha Washington, Dolly Madison, and Elizabeth Schulyer Hamilton.[20]

The York Museum Quilt was pieced from over 120 dress fabric remnants, most showing signs of previous use.  The museum site indicates that the oldest fabric in the quilt dates from the 1640s, which means that the materials came from a stash the maker had either collected for a long time or which had been passed down to her by perhaps her mother or grandmother.  Quilt fabrics, then, could also be inherited, again indicating that they were luxury items.  This debunks the popular notion that patchwork quilts were made out of necessity by women of meager means.  Many of these quilts were made by well-to-do ladies, often to showcase their stitching abilities, to indicate their social status through the expensive materials included in the quilt, for decorative purposes, and as heirlooms to be passed down from generation to generation.[21]

Who was Anna Tuels?

An Anna Tuels is recorded in the List of Mayflower Descendants compiled by George Ernest Bowman and now in the Marshfield, Massachusetts Vital Records Office.  She was born in Marshfield on 9 October 1759 to Barnard Tuels (dates unknown; b. ca. 1720-?) and Experience Taylor (b. 1722-?), likely the maker of Anna’s quilt.[22]  All that is known about Barnard is that he enlisted in 1776 in Marshfield as a private in Captain Joseph Stetson’s company.  He then re-enlisted in 1778 under Captain John Turner for service in Cambridge.[23] Experience was the great-great-granddaughter of Arthur Howland and Margaret Reed.  Her great-granduncle was John Howland who arrived in Plymouth on the Mayflower in 1620.  Arthur arrived in America in the late 1620s or 1630s and, in 1647 he purchased an estate in Marshfield, establishing the family’s American roots there.[24]  Experience’s parents were Samuel Taylor and Elizabeth Carver, and she was named after her paternal grandmother, Experience Williamson.  She married Barnard at an unknown date and they had seven children.  The first, John, was born in 1747 and died two years later.  Sarah was born in 1749, Susanna in 1752, Charles in 1754, and Isaiah in 1757.  The dates of their deaths are unknown.  Anna was the sixth child born to the couple, and the youngest was Experience, who died in 1846.

According to the Halls of New England, Genealogical and Biographical, compiled by Rev. David B. Hall and published in Duanesburgh, New York in 1883, Anna married Captain Luke Hall (1767-1815) who was seven-and-a-half years her junior.  Their wedding took place in 1793.[25]  They had three children.  William was their firstborn; his birth and death dates are unknown, though couples then usually bore children soon after marriage and therefore, he may have been born in c. 1794 or 1795.  Luke and Samuel were born in 1797 and 1800, respectively.

Anna was thirty-four years old in 1793 and her husband was twenty-six.  On average, girls married between the ages of twenty and twenty-two, and husbands were usually four or five years older than their wives.[26]  The age of consent was twenty-one and men normally married at around the age of twenty-seven.[27]  After a woman reached her mid-twenties, spinsterhood became a real possibility and caused great unease among women.[28]  Also, it was customary for women to wait until their older siblings married.  Anna was Barnard and Experience’s sixth child.  Nothing is known about her siblings, except for her youngest sister, also named Experience (b. 1762), who married Daniel Walker in Marshfield in 1784.[29]  By then Anna was two months shy of twenty-five and her chances of finding a husband were slowly fading. Perhaps Barnard and Experience assented to their youngest daughter’s marriage before Anna’s to avoid ending up with two spinsters in the family.  This might also explain why Anna married a much younger man.  At thirty-four she was not left with many choices.

As most marriages of the time, Anna’s was most likely arranged.  Luke, like Anna, was a Mayflower descendant.  He was the great-great-great grandson of Edward Doty, who arrived in Plymouth on the Mayflower, and Faith Clarke, who came to America in 1634 on the ship Francis.  He was also related to Richard Warren and Elizabeth Walker, on his mother’s side, both of whom also arrived in America on the Mayflower.  Mayflower descendants preferred to marry within their own group to retain their social and economic stature. The Halls were indeed a family of wealth and high standing.  Little information exists on Luke Hall’s business activities.  It is known, however, that his sons were shipbuilders; they built thirty vessels between 1825 and 1840 at the White Ferry Shipyard in Marshfield.[30]

Another fact regarding the Hall family that is known is that in 1815, Luke took his youngest son Samuel, then fourteen, to Charleston, South Carolina, on a business trip.  Upon their return home, they passed through New York and both caught yellow fever.[31]  Luke died and was buried in Staten Island, and Samuel returned home after his recovery.  Anna Tuels lived until 1848.  She was laid to rest in the Cemetery at Marshfield Centre, this according to records compiled by Stanley W. Smith in 1906.[32]  At the cemetery, the younger Luke erected a monument to his parents that included the following inscription:

In Memory of

LUKE HALL

Who died on Staten Island,

June 28, 1815,

Aet. 48 years.

MRS. ANNA, WIFE OF

Luke Hall,

Died at East Boston,

July 20, 1848,

Aet 88 years.[33]

The Maker of the Anna Tuels Quilt 

If the Anna Tuels from Marshfield was in fact the first owner of the Wadsworth Atheneum quilt, then clearly, its maker was Experience Taylor.  Every piece of the puzzle fits.  The date of the quilt coincides with Anna and Experience’s dates.  These women were Mayflower descendants and affluent.  Therefore, Experience could afford the costly British fabrics with which the quilt was created.  We may never know Experience’s motive for making the quilt for her daughter.  However, we can safely say that, if these were in fact the women associated with the history of the quilt, then the quilt was not intended to commemorate Anna’s marriage, as some believe.  Quilts were then objects that took one or more years to make.  In view of this, the Anna Tuels Quilt is not only a magnificent example of late eighteenth-century craftsmanship, but also stands as testimony of the love of a mother for her daughter.  With every stitch Experience made while creating the quilt, she no doubt hoped for a long, healthy, prosperous, and peaceful life for Anna, and perhaps also a good husband.