COVERLET

Schoolgirls were not the only females to express their cultured and refined selves through stitch--Especially in the antebellum period, women, married and single, created bedcovers that demonstrated not only talent but also the ability to obtain fashionable materials and the time necessary to commit to a large project. An early and elegant example of this kind of work in MESDA’s collection is a whitework bedcover created by one or more of the five daughters of Amelia Mildred Chenoweth and Harmon Nash of Jefferson County, Kentucky.

Nash died prematurely of yellow fever while working as a riverboat hand, leaving Amelia, who never remarried, to raise nine children. According to family stories, left without a father, the girls learned a variety of profitable endeavors including spinning and weaving wool, cotton, and flax. The oldest child, Elizabeth (1795–1884), also learned to weave straw and make straw hats, which were exchanged at kinsman John Chenoweth’s store in Louisville for imported European goods that came to him by flatboat and steamboat down the Ohio River via Pittsburgh and the Forbes Road from Philadelphia. When the second eldest daughter, Amelia Naomi (1797–1874), became engaged to a medical doctor, James Porter (born about 1779; died after 1850), the family had only enough money to purchase a wedding outfit—a dress, slippers, and a hat. Elizabeth outfitted other female members of the family with newly-made straw hats and slippers with sheep skin soles. Another daughter, Mary (born 1804), wove linen fabric for dresses, which she also constructed.

It is likely that Elizabeth and/or Mary, perhaps with the help of other siblings, made the whitework coverlet as well, probably a gift for Naomi, whose wedding took place on the 19th of June 1823. Although the fabric of the bedcover, three full-width panels of plain weave linen, is of domestic production, the fringe was commercially woven and the embroidery threads—the heavy cotton thread outlines and the fine linen thread used to create the lacy fillings of the flowers and leaves—were sold in dry goods shops. These materials were undoubtedly exports from Philadelphia as was the technique used for the fillings. Known as Dresden work, this embroidered lace form was popular among Philadelphia teachers throughout the second half of the eighteenth century. Even though they lived on the outskirts of a town that in 1820 had a population of about 4000, the Nash girls had the opportunity and means to purchase or barter for both fashionable materials and the latest patterns and needlework techniques by contacting their storekeeper relation.