Laurel Horton, An Upcountry Legacy: Mary Black's Family Quilts

"The seven quilts presented in this essay were made in the Carolina Piedmont between the mid-nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries. Part of a collection of sixteen quilts, they once belonged to Mary Louisa Snoddy Black (1860-1927), who lived her entire life in Spartanburg County, South Carolina.

Collections of family quilts are not unusual. What gives these special significance is their age, provenance, and the attention Mary Black devoted to ensuring that the names and relations of the makers would be remembered. The number of quilts and the care with which they were labeled suggests that she thought of them as a collection, the culmination of the work of many hands. Sometime in the mid-1920s, Mary met with her two adult daughters, Rosa and Mary Kate, and passed along information about the quilts and quiltmakers, which were sewn, as small slips of paper, onto each quilt.

As the historical archaeologist James Deetz urged, those "small things forgotten," the ordinary objects that remain from past generations, must be examined in "new and imaginative ways" to achieve "a different appreciation for what life is today, and was in the past." When interpreted thoughtfully and alongside other historical materials, Mary Black's collection can convey the values and experiences of her family, beginning with the arrival of her great-grandparents in the Carolinas in 1773 and continuing through her descendants..."