Quilts & Women of the Mormon Migrations
 Mary Bywater Cross
 (Reviewed by The Editor - Rebecca Brown)
 1996 Rutledge Hill Press, Nashville TN USA
  ISBN: 1558534091


A unique collection of quilts the Mormon Women stitched along the trail to their Zion in Utah Territory & during their settling of Salt Lake Valley. With personal reminiscences, photographs, paintings & the quilts this epic migration is respectfully recorded.

Because The Saints were a literate crew they kept records of everything; of their church activities; their ship lists; handcarts lists & wagon train lists; they sketched scene after scene & were blessed with C. C. A. Christensen, an oils artist who illustrated the excitement & tidy organization of both life on the trail & the settling of the Mormon Zion. Mormons came via everywhere: China, Australia; Scandinavia, Europe, Ireland, Britain, Iceland & India & brought with them their unique & colorful quilting skills.

In 1994 Mary Bywater Cross undertook an eight day trek with the Pacific Crest Outward Bound Backpack and Canoe Trip. Here this author realized an empathy for the handcart pioneers and other self-reliant Mormon women who had experienced the adventure of total strangers coming together as a unified group to confront unfamiliar challenges & the daily tasks of unloading & reloading gear, preparing & eating meals, often after dark & walking the day's planned distance.

Wallace Stegner wrote in his The Gathering of Zion: The Story of the Mormon Trail: “I shall try to present them in their terms and judge them in mine. That I do not accept the faith that possessed them does not mean I doubt their frequent devotion and heroism in its service. Especially their women. Their women were incredible.” What Wallace could not know or discover because of his gender was the life & times of those incredible women. Mary Bywater Cross has crossed that barrier & given us an unprecedented heirloom.

A letter of appreciation from the International Society of Daughters of the Utah Pioneers set Mary Bywater Cross on her second epic treasury in American quilting history. Ranging from the Early period of 1800-1850 representing many women in their early life prior to & during their major overland migration. The Mid period of 1860-1890 when the federal government reached the Territory & embroiled the embattled pioneers in the Utah War, sees the women in a time of isolation & self-sufficiency, cut off from outside resources. The final Late period of 1890-1935 after the Manifesto that changed Church policy & began a time of normal access to broader worlds of textiles & resources in quiltmaking.

Each quilt, no matter its condition, its purpose, or the technical skill of the women, leads to a rich & compelling discovery of previously unknown women's lives. Witness the three lions in a circlet on which has been embroidered the British monarch's motto or the Star Quilt of Sage Richards Treharne Jones from Wales who came on her parents' mission, both of whom succumbed along the trail. Or Mary Mortensen Bjork's migration from Denmark & her lively Crazy Patch quilt; or Christina Erika Forsgren Davis from Sweden & her plain & simple Strip Quilt. Or Betsy Prudence Howard Bullock's Peter and Paul Quilt all the way from Bedfordshire, England. Or Matilda Robison King's Washington Plume applique on her way from Montgomery County, New York. Many women were members of the same Relief Society & so several quilts with similar designs were made.

Each section records a short history of the colonization & settlement in Zion & about The Women & then The Quilts. Page after page of memories, statistics & the glorious heirlooms in full color with close-ups of details. Dorinda Melissa Moody Salmon Goheen Slade, who migrated from Iredell County in North Carolina, stitched her Victory Quilt with sun & wagon wheels & with borders of indigo dyed winding plants & berries. Once in the Dixie settlement of southern Utah, where Saints from the Southern states of America, were sent to raise cotton, Dorinda's quilts become sharply different. Her Sunrise in the Pines Quilt is brilliant as too the quilt she made with her daughter. & the list goes on in all their rich color, materials, styles & stories.

The section on The Quilts is a remarkable history of the fabrics used & the styles chosen together with where the women were born, when they stitched the presented treasure, when & where they joined the Latter-Day Saints & when they made the migration westward.

With Appendices on Quilt Analysis, Preserving the Treasures; Chronology of Related Mormon History, 1830-1900; Pioneer emigration and Migration Company Lists; a comprehensive Notes, Bibliography, Acknowledgments, Photo Credits & Index Quilts & Women of the Mormon Migrations is a profound study honoring those courageous pioneers.

Mary Bywater Cross has done quilters, pioneers & women in general a profound service by her research, writing about & cataloging these fragile & beautiful works of art & comfort. There is something deeply connective about the fabrics & designs created by these intrepid & enduring women.

Mary Bywater Cross is a quilt researcher specializing in women's history. A graduate of the University of Iowa, she is also a board member of the American Quilt Study Group.

Also by Mary Bywater Cross: Treasures in the Trunk: Memories, dreams and accomplishments of the pioneer women who traveled the Oregon Trail

Do check out my Interview with Quilt Historian Mary Bywater Cross - it is fascinating!
(01/07/01)

Rebecca