1877 - 1878 Joseph Granger's Child's Quilt
date: label: date made
content: 1877-1878
name: label: maker
content: Granger, Joseph H.
notes: label: Description
content: Joseph Granger’s granddaughter donated both her grandmother’s (Caroline Granger’s) prize-winning child’s quilt and the quilt that her grandfather made. According to a family note with the quilt, “Pa quilted the other all himself by machine.”
label: Description
content: Joseph Granger chose to machine-quilt in a triple diagonal grid pattern, similar to the background of his wife’s hand-quilted child’s quilt that won a medal at the New England Agricultural Fair in 1878. It is not known whether Joseph made the quilt as a personal challenge to equal his wife’s accomplishment, or if it was made to prove the point that what could be done by hand could also be done with a machine. After several decades of improvements, sewing machines, by the 1870s, had become popular consumer products to have in the home. Possibly the idea of mechanical sewing was intriguing to Joseph and he wished to try his proficiency with it.
label: Description
content: Joseph H. Granger was born on October 21, 1842, in L’Acadie, Quebec, Canada. He married Marie Caroline Lamoureux (1850-1936) in N. Grosvenordale, Connecticut, on January 30, 1873. They had twelve children and lived in Worcester, Masssachusetts. Joseph died on June 16, 1934.
label: Description
content: Claire L. Meyer, the Granger’s granddaughter wrote: “Many thanks for your letter of July 7, 1972, regarding a crib quilt made by my grandmother a hundred years ago. I am also enclosing for your consideration a quilt machine stitched by my grandfather! . . . I hope it will be worthy of the national collection.” The two quilts are worthy, and provide an interesting contrast between the precise handwork of Mrs. Caroline Granger and the equally precise machine stitching of Mr. Joseph Granger.
label: Location
content: Currently not on view
place: label: place made
content: United States: Massachusetts, Worcester
topic: label: Subject
content: Quilting
setName: label: See more items in
content: Home and Community Life: Textiles
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content: Textiles
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content: Domestic Furnishings
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content: Quilts
creditLine: label: Credit Line
content: Gift of Mrs. Edwin P. Meyer
dataSource: label: Data Source
content: National Museum of American History
identifier: label: ID Number
content: TE.T16318
label: accession number
content: 302043
label: catalog number
content: T16318
objectType: label: Object Name
content: quilt, crib
physicalDescription: label: Physical Description
content: fabric, cotton (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: thread, cotton (overall material)
label: Physical Description
content: filling, cotton (overall material)
label: Measurements
content: overall: 40 in x 31 in; 103 cm x 79 cm