Old Signature Quilt

100-year-old signature quilt is veritable ‘Who's Who' of 1908 Eureka Springs


By Kathryn Lucariello, Carroll County News


EUREKA SPRINGS - Bank of Eureka Springs CEO John Cross is practically a never-ending source of fascinating historical lore and collections.

No sooner did we do the story on stereoscopes than he told us he was in the process of purchasing a 100-year-old signature quilt from a lady in Utah.

The quilt, it turns out, is a veritable “Who's Who” of Eureka Springs in 1908.


Perusing the 42 squares, Cross noted in the lower right corner, “J.F. John.”

“He was my doctor!” he said. Cross said he knew a lot of the people on the quilt.

The quilt consists of 212 signatures and embellishments embroidered in red thread of at least two shades.

“Doing a solid color was popular at the time,” said Sheryl Baker, Cross' secretary. “People liked to embroider, so everyone embroidered a block. This probably was a fund-raiser. It was popular at that time to buy a button or a quilt block to raise funds.”

Perhaps the most interesting block on the quilt is the signature of Carrie A. Nation, complete with hatchet.

Nation's last home, “Hatchet Hall,” was purchased in 1908 in Eureka Springs. Three years after the quilt was completed, Nation collapsed while giving a speech at a local park (most likely Basin Park). She was taken to the hospital in Leavenworth, Kan., where she died at the age of 65 after being bedridden and possibly comatose for six months.

The quilt was finished in May 1908, as one block attests. There are two other blocks with a 1908 date also.

Cross purchased the quilt from Shirley Moore, 89, of Hurricane, Utah. The quilt had been handed down in her family.

Her grandmother, Florence Case Pearson, moved with her husband, Addison Faucett Pearson, to Eureka Springs from Iowa in retirement. They eventually returned to Iowa.

Moore is not sure how her family got the quilt, as their names are not on it.

Florence gave the quilt to her daughter, Carol. After Carol died, her husband gave it to Moore and her sister, Elaine Hamilton. Elaine kept the quilt with her.

Twenty years ago, Moore said, she and Elaine took a trip to Eureka Springs and brought the quilt with them. Elaine wanted to give the quilt to the museum, but “was not impressed” with the quality of the museum at that time, doubting that the quilt would be well taken care of.

“When my sister died, we found it in a cupboard, folded away,” Moore said.

She's had it since 2005. She put it on display in a quilt show in Utah. Last year, Moore came back to Eureka on a bus tour, hoping to see the house on Spring Street where her grandmother lived. Although the tour passed the house and she got pictures, the bus driver said he could not stop.

She remembers visiting Eureka Springs when she was four years old.

“I always had it in my mind that the quilt should be returned to Eureka Springs,” she said. “I didn't recognize any of the names except Carrie Nation.”

Moore contacted the Chamber of Commerce, who put her in touch with Cross.

He had the quilt appraised and paid Moore $1,000 for it.

Most of the names on the quilt are those of women, but married women were known by their husbands' names, such as “Mrs. R.G. Floyd,” so it is easy to tell which families are on the quilt. Most of them are prominent city members of the day.

Some are from out of town, such as those from Memphis, Tenn., or Cairo, Mo.

Other well-known names are Mr. and Mrs. J.W. Newport; A.N. Matthews and G.U. Matthews (who founded the Commercial Bank at the cornrer of Spring and Main streets); Mr. and Mrs. G.H. McLaughlin, who had a grocery store near the library; Mr. and Mrs. H.T. Pendergrass, who had Pendergrass Drug Store; Dr. Pearl Tatman, and many more.

Cross speculates the Christian Church may have been central to the quilt, as its block is near the center, with no names in the block. Perhaps church members made the quilt as a fund-raiser or raffle of some kind.

The church, located near the old red brick schoolhouse, and across the street from the Thach Hotel, burned when the hotel burned in the 1930s.

“The Basin Park Hotel was only three years old,” Cross said. “In 1908, that's when my grandfather (Claude A. Fuller) built the courthouse, when he was mayor.”

Cross has a book published in 1907 that lists and shows photos of the members of the “Arkansaw Travelers,” a men's organization started in 1903 with 14 members. By 1905, it had 1,000 members.

Many of the names on the quilt are in that book.

Signature quilts were - and still are - a specific genre of quilting. Historically, they were assembled for a variety of reasons, the most popular being a fund-raiser of some sort, a token of friendship, a memory tool for families to preserve genealogy, a farewell gift from a church congregation to a departing pastor or as a promotion for some cause.

Xenia Cord, in her article, “Signature Quilts,” may have given us a clue to the Eureka quilt with the following:

“Women began to use quilts more publicly as a means of endorsing some social or moral issue, focusing their convictions and commitments by creating a quilt containing their names, and then selling or auctioning it to raise funds for the cause. Especially before women were enfranchised, their avenues for political and social involvement were limited to those activities that were an extension of their homemaking and nurturing skills....

“Unless the format included pieced block work, the names were often embroidered in a redwork format, with embroidery forming all or the greater part of the design....

“Because they traditionally represented a group united in common interests and goals, most often churches were and are the focus of this sort of activity, with quilts serving in a number of ways.”

Because Carrie Nation's block is right under the Christian Church, could this have been a fund-raising quilt supporting the Temperance movement in Eureka Springs?

We may never know.

Cross intends to preserve the quilt in a frame under glass and display it at the bank.