quiltersmuse.com Blog

When I think of myself, I often attach the self-appointed title of “Independent Scholar.” That is a designation for a researcher who works on discovering information, some of it never before analyzed or interpreted. Unlike academic scholars who are associated with an institution, my writings about my findings reach a very broad audience worldwide. In other words, they are not hidden in some obscure journal, or written in such high-falutin’ language that only a limited audience would understand or appreciate them. I like knowledge to be understood because I am forever and always a teacher.

More than 1 1/2 years ago, I embarked on a journey, one that would lead me to an intimate understanding of a woman whose life I have now written about, in detail. While researching the parameters of her 19th and 20th century life and its circumstances, I came to know her, her thoughts and feelings (as recorded in her letters and diaries), her family and their interests, anecdotes and origins.

It was fun to discover her living family members and have them visit me in my home, with ancestral quilts. It was absolute joy to be able to transcribe the notations on the mock-up quilt charts that she had made (that are now in a museum), and to discover that she’d written “McKim” and “LaGanke” and referred to other quilt historians of her time in notations that only I, as a quilt historian, would understand.

I would not have been able to learn anything about this extraordinary woman, had I not realized that her name had been misrepresented by a careless writer who worked at the museum that holds her priceless quilt charts. That mistake, unfortunately, has caused a lot of angst for a great number of people: museum officials who added the wrong name to other books they have printed; anger and angst for the family member(s) who knew about the mistake with the first publication of an article in 1997 that featured a few paragraphs about her and her work; and the mistake has caused shame to the scholar herself who misrepresented the name AND the two institutions who allowed her to present symposium papers under their jurisdiction.

For me, I have been frustrated beyond belief that this egregious error has not been admitted or rectified, but has been left to stand as truth. The International Quilt Study Center, a supposed bastion of the TRUTH and quilt scholarship, was notified early-on in my research that the abstract presented on their Symposium Papers page was wrong. Dead wrong. Besides the wrong name, the abstract contained other wrong information. The body of the abstract has changed a number of times. The name of the talk: “Patterns and Insights: Emily Webster” has not changed.

Ellen Emeline Hardy Webster is the New Hampshire woman who made the charts. She was a prominent woman of her day, involved in leading many clubs in her home town. Her husband was a dentist. She gave lectures in four different areas of interest, and after his death, she earned two degrees from Boston University and became an instructor at Wheaton College. She played organ and piano at the local church. Her life is extraordinary in every way and I wrote 355 pages to tell you about it, complete with 340 wonderful old photos and new photos of scenes and people from New Hampshire that figured into her life.

I have insisted on the TRUTH but have been met with a deaf ear. I don’t think that the fact that the “scholar” was vetted by a committee holds much weight. Committees have been known to be wrong, long before now. We don’t have to look too far back into U.S. History to discover that!

All I can promise you is that I will keep on repeating myself until the day I die. In fact, my dying words will probably be, “But, her name was never Emily. It was Ellen.”

Some people would not acknowledge truth if it was biting them in the butt. Of this I am sure, her name was Ellen Emeline Hardy Webster and of that I am 120% certain. The extra 20% accounts for my continued aggravation.

The scholar who made the mistake has admitted it. So … ????? Why not let the new myth stand in place, eh? Seems to be the trend!

September 24, 2009 – Patricia Cummings standing inside covered bridge in Campton, NH, former hometown of Dr. Clarendon P. Webster, Ellen’s husband.

Patricia Cummings
Quilter’s Muse Publications

If you have a family member who still has his or her faculties and can remember some things, it might be a good idea to interview the person, and record that interview, or take notes. How quickly information gets lost! Sometimes, after an older person dies, it is difficult for family members to reconstruct times past, and even to understand who was related to whom, in the family. Not much time is needed for this loss of comprehension to occur.

Recently, as I said in a previous post, several family members have been searching for genealogical information. My son, in particular, has been looking for his “roots,” especially now that he is a father, too. I can help by providing what I know.

As a result of his research, I am finding out that there is much that I did not know. Sociologically-speaking, some of the information about our forebears is very surprising, and paints a picture of living conditions in New England during the mill years. Since both sides of the family were immigrants during the nineteenth century, a number of them were mill workers, primarily in textile factories.

I think that we better understand ourselves when we know the people who went before us. Without even having known some of ancestors, I can see that I hold their values, sometimes their opinions (as reported), their work ethic, and most especially, the esteem for which they held Education.

I am always happy when the younger generation wants to know what it was like to live at a certain time period. While Americans are influenced by their own immediate surroundings and affiliations, we are also swayed to some degree by popular culture, at any given time. That includes objects of material culture and music. Music has been a terrific bridge that connects the generations.

“Art is long, life is short.”

The “things” we have in this life do not matter in the long run. Your Mercedes will rust, your health will deteriorate, and people you love very much will die. We only have today, nothing more. Believe in something more than YOU because, believe me, you are not “it.” You are a piece of the puzzle, and a cog in the wheel of life. You will do your work, and then, there will be no more work for you to do. So, make the most of each day. Every breath is not yours to take, save not for the grace of your Maker. In time, you, too, will be a name on the chart of the Family Tree, if you are lucky. If you have done something memorable, perhaps someone will remember your works. Just recall the ever-repeated words in song: “We are but dust in the wind.”

Patricia Cummings