Pieces of the past
19th-century friendship quilt finds its
way back to its rightful Charleston owner
Wednesday February 26, 2003
By Rusty
Marks
STAFF WRITER
In 1846, Ellen Louise Newlin married Jacob Chalfant in Chester County, Pa. Relatives made a friendship quilt for the couple, inscribing their names on the white squares for posterity.
The quilt recently came home after more than 150 years.
“None of this could have happened without the Internet,” said Suzie Ferguson, a descendant of the Newlins who lives in Charleston.
She found out about the quilt quite by accident. Ferguson is an amateur genealogist and manages Web sites tracing her family history. People frequently send her e-mail requests for information.
In the 1840s, it was common for newly married couples to receive a friendship quilt. Family members would sign their names on the quilt and date it as a way to remember the event.
Ferguson said a woman in Colorado found such a quilt at a sale near Denver and bought it. Curious about the dozens of names inscribed on the red and white quilt, she began doing research into the quilt’s history.
“She went to her computer and started plugging the names in, and my name kept popping up,” said Ferguson. “These were all people I had researched.”
The woman e-mailed Ferguson, asking if she could tell her anything about the people who signed the quilt. “Not only could I tell her about the names, but half of them were my family,” Ferguson said.
She eventually talked the woman into selling her the heirloom quilt.
Ferguson, whose maiden name is Newlin, has discovered quite a bit about her heritage since she began research into her roots about 10 years ago. She has traced the family with certainty to 1683, when ancestor Nicholas Newlin first settled in Chester County, Pa.
“They were all Quakers who came over with William Penn when he came to establish the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a Quaker colony,” she said. “I had no idea I had Quakers in my background.”
The family later moved to Belmont County, Ohio. Ferguson’s father, Howard West Newlin, was born in Belmont County in 1912, but the
family moved to Wheeling when he was a boy and remained in West Virginia. Howard moved his own family to Charleston in 1953.
Ferguson’s interest in family history was first piqued when she discovered divorce papers filed in 1881 by Sarah Jane Newlin against Robert L. Newlin, Ferguson’s great-grandfather. Divorce was almost unheard of at the time, especially if initiated by a wife. “It got me thinking, what else is back there?” Ferguson recalled. “It’s fascinating.”
Ferguson has since re-created the family history of the Newlins and of the Bullards, her mother’s ancestors. She manages Web sites tracing both families, and is also compiling the history of Chester County, where the Newlins first settled.
Ellen Louise Newlin, whose wedding Ferguson’s quilt was made to commemorate, died after her first child was born. Jacob Chalfant later remarried and moved west. Presumably, that’s how the quilt wound up in Colorado.
“How it ended up in a sale, who knows?” Ferguson said
