Quilt
A framed medallion with a series of pieced borders using block and roller printed cottons, the central area alternating on-point squares within straight squares. The center square is a single piece of printed fabric centered on a stylized pine cone, surrounded by a sawtooth border, both on point. Triangles of a brown ground block print and squares with eight-pointed stars alternate with plain white cotton triangles to create the next four borders. This area is surrounded by a narrow border which is a strip of yellow and brown fabric. Next is a large sawtooth border alternating solid white fabric with another yellow and brown drab print. A solid white stuffed and quilted border is followed by a pieced roller-printed border of squares on point, with eight-pointed stars in the corners. A narrow white border is next, and lastly a plain chintz border completes the quilt. There is a thin loft cotton filling, and the back is roller-printed, with five panels. The cotton binding is applied on the straight grain,.375" wide. Quilted with cotton quilting thread at 8-9 stitches per inch in grid square, crosshatch, grid diamond, and outline stitches. The white cotton areas are elaborately corded and stuffed with grapevines and floral designs.
Provenance Narrative Family history accompanying the quilt says it was made by Ludwell Harrison Goosley (1754-1813) and her daughters, and that the youngest daughter Susan completed the two outer borders of the quilt at some point afterwards. These borders use a printed fabric that dates later than the rest of the prints in the quilt, and the white border is simply grid quilted, in contrast to the elaborate stuffed work in the other white borders.
Ludwell Harrison, daughter of Benjamin Harrison and Susannah Digges, married William Goosley (or Goolsby) on January 16, 1773, in Yorktown or Wakefield Virginia. Between November of 1773 and 1799, they had twelve children, five of whom did not survive childhood. Susan, born 1799, was the youngest. William died in 1809. In 1810, widowed Ludwell appears in the census in York County VA with five daughters (Elizabeth, Lucy, Sarah, Anne, and Susan, born between 1776 and 1799; another had married and moved away) and seventeen enslaved servants, some of whom might have worked on the quilt in addition to the daughters.
In 1813, Ludwell died and the family appears to have dispersed. The quilt may have been finished not long before or after Susan was married in Greenbrier County, VA (now WV) in 1827 to William Campbell. (Greenbrier Co. is far from the family's earlier home in York County, but there is a William Golsby, possibly a relation--their brother William died in 1806--in the 1820 census for Greenbrier County.) The quilt descended to Susan and William Campbell's daughter, Susan Ludwell Campbell, who donated it to the Massanutten Chapter in 1907 with its family history. The Massanutten (VA) DAR Chapter donated the quilt to the DAR Museum in 1962.
Place Made United States VIRGINIA York County Greenbrier County