Pieced from Ellens Quilt: Ellen Spaulding Reeds Letters and Story
by Linda Otto Lipsett
Category: History

In 1854 in Ludlow Vermont, a friendship quilt inscribed with 63 names was made for nineteen-year-old Ellen Spaulding Reed's wedding & going-away present. Using the quilt as a research document, the author has pieced together this nineteenth-century woman's story through narration & Ellen Spaulding Reed's original letters. Nineteen-year-old Ellen took her wedding & going-away present, her bridal friendship quilt, with her to her log house in Wisconsin & wrote home to Ludlow, Vermont, of "the little thing such as they call a house" & her life in the West. Even to her death, at twenty-two years of age, Ellen longed to go back home. Her wish was fulfilled only after death when she was buried on a quiet hillside in her beloved Vermont. The story continues with her husband's life through the hard times of the Civil War & his later years in Missouri. PIECED FROM ELLEN'S QUILT, 224 pages in length, includes 16 full color pages featuring Ellen's friendship quilt & quilt blocks, as well as 37 nineteenth-century photographs important to Ellen's story. Bibliography & index included. Order book from Halstead & Meadows Publishing, P.O. Box 317211, Dayton, Ohio 45431. (513) 426-5699.