Exhibit on Signatures in Union County Bed Coverings

    BUFFALO TWP: Volunteers working with items from the collections of the Union County Historical Society are already preparing for the first Sunday that the 1793 Dale/Engle/Walker is open to the public — June 7^th from 2-4 PM.  The new exhibit, “Discreet to Flamboyant: Signatures in Union County Quilts and Coverlets,” can be seen when house tours are given Sunday afternoons June through October.  Ruth-Alice Spangler, and Mary Jo Spangler (both of New Berlin), Diane Meixel and Jeannette Lasansky (of Lewisburg) are gathering the material and working together, with support on signage from Nancy Cleaver and Owen Mahon (of Lewisburg).
                    Initials, personal names, or other marks of identification appeared on quilts from time to time.  The examples in this exhibit of Union County pieces cover a range of bedding types: appliquéd quilt blocks with inked signatures of Lewisburg women in the 1850s, a pieced Bear Paw quilt made in 1898 by Mary Jean Shontz of West Buffalo Township, with the hand prints of her granddaughter Clara Reigle Taylor sewn into its corners, and an 1895 red embroidered white Friendship quilt of the Allenwood area.
                    A newer red-on-white quilt on exhibit was a fundraiser for the group called the Organization United for the Environment.  O.U.E. fought the placement of a hazardous waste incinerator just north of Allenwood, Union County, at what became the Great Streams Industrial Park.  Quilt maker Jean Shackelford organized this fundraising quilt, inspired in part by old quilts she saw during her participation in the Oral Traditions quilt documentation projects in the 1980s.  The quilt raised substantial funds for O.U.E., and then it was donated to the UCHS in 1994.
                    Pennsylvania’s woven coverlets of the 1830s to 1850s often had two of their corners woven with the weaver’s name, location and date.  The corners are called “cartouches,” and they were, in effect, advertisements for the weaver’s business. Three coverlets by the Schnees and the Angstadts will be on view.  The exhibit can be seen Sunday afternoons from 2 to 4 when the Dale/Engle/Walker site is open to the public, for tours of the historic house, the furnished wagon shed and newly designed milk production house.
                    For more information contact the UCHS office at 524-8666 or hstoricl@ptd.net or visit the website www.unioncountyhistoricalsociety.org.