Philadelphia Merchant and Quaker Quilts

Center of a wholecloth silk quilt made by Philadelphia Quakers

Hannah Callender, Sarah Smith and Catherine Smith,

Dated 1761

Collection of Independence Hall

Silk wholecloth quilts were a Quaker tradition.

Quaker Thomas P. Cope kept a dry goods store in Philadelphia in Pewter Platter Alley after the Revolution. In his diary he recorded the ups and downs of retail business through wars, embargoes, aggravating partnerships and ship wrecks.

Thomas P. Cope (1768-1854) in later life

 from the collection of the

Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Like many Philadelphians he was a Quaker.

Cope made far more money from the shipping business than from selling fabric and china in his store. He became an importer, a speculator in dry goods, and built a ship to sail between Philadelphia and ports in China, India and Europe.

Detail of a pieced silk quilt by

Quaker Rachel Goodwin Woodnutt,

Salem, New Jersey, late 1820s.

Collection of the Winterthur Museum.

Quaker dress relied upon plain colored silks, a commodity that Cope and other Quaker merchants imported for their customers.

Note the complex interlocked cable in the quilting, a pattern that became quite popular with later Pennsylvania quilters. See the whole quilt here:
http://content.winterthur.org:2011/cdm/singleitem/collection/quilts/id/351/rec/1

A month after the War of 1812 began Cope was lucky enough to have a ship's cargo released by the customs inspector. The Lancaster was carrying tea, silk and India goods from the port of Canton. "We sold the Cargo this day at public auction at a very large profit....Calicoes that cost from 5 to 7 1/2 went for 45 to 56 cts. per yard."

When I visited the Winterthur Museum for their exhibit Quilts in a Material World a few years ago I photographed another early silk Quaker quilt with similar quilting pattern.

 In October, 1813 Cope assessed the effects of the war on trade.

"The pressure of the war has been as yet but little felt by people in general. Those who had foreign goods on hand have mostly sold them at great profit, while the domestic manufacturers obtain large profits on what they make."

An advertisement from 1811 in a Philadelphia newspaper listing locally made fabrics. The Alms House was one of the public institutions where inmates manufactured fabrics. Note the "Fleece Cotton, for quilts, &c.," probably cotton batting.

The "Thomas P. Cope" by Edward Moran.

The artist and his artist brother Thomas Moran came to Philadelphia on this ship in the Cope Packet Line. This detail shows the ship on its way to Cope's wharf.

After the War of 1812 Cope's Line of Packets regularly sailed to Liverpool with passengers and freight. Once trade opened up again profits flowed and Cope began quite wealthy.

A few months after the war was over the Albany Argus advertised "Fresh Goods at Peace Prices". W.H. & J. Hoyt announced a post-war shipment of "seasonable goods, which they offer at a small advance from judicious purchases." Do note that New Yorkers were still selling slaves in 1815. In the lower right hand corner "For Sale, a negro boy, about 15."

Thomas Cope's diary was discovered in the 1930s and published in 1978.
Philadelphia Merchant: The Diary of Thomas P. Cope, 1800- 1851, edited by Eliza Cope Harrison (South Bend, IN: Gateway Editions, 1978)

See a wool wholecloth Quaker quilt dated 1813, possibly made in Burlington, New Jersey in the collection of the International Quilt Study Center & Museum (# 2002.012.0001)
http://cdn.firespring.com/images/f4c4c237-ccae-4148-9422-ccbcfc388de8.jpg

Read Linda and Mary's blog on Quaker Quilt History here:
http://www.quakerquilthistory.com/

Another wholecloth quilt from the Winterthur collection.

See the catalog of the exhibit here:

http://books.google.com/books/about/Quilts_in_a_Material_World.html?id=PSpmQgAACAAJ

Domestic Fabrics

 

Here's an early Virginia quilt you may have seen displayed at the Rocky Mountain

Quilt Museum a few years ago. It's signed in cross-stitch: "Sally Lee Camden her Bedquilt"

 

 

Rusty who owns the quilt has found a Sally Lee Camden born in 1777 (or possibly 1785) in Amherst County, Virginia. Her parents were William and Sybell Dent Camden. She married Peter Dent in 1807 and changed her name to Sally Dent, so we can guess that the quilt was made before 1807. Sally died about 1850 in Bedford County, Virginia.

 

The Camden quilt seems to be a good example of a quilt made from domestically produced cotton prints. The simple calicoes  in shades of brown, brick red, pink and indigo blues could very well be the product of American mills.

 

 

The quilt, dated 1812, is made of similar prints

There's really no way to tell if these basic calicoes are domestic or imported but they illustrate well the kind of prints being manufactured in the United States before 1820.

Even with all the smuggling going on in coastal towns like Newburyport, Massachusetts, imported yardgoods were in short supply during the War of 1812. Searches for fabrics in the Early American Newspapers database come up with few hits for words like "calico" or "ginghams" in 1813 and 1814.

Newburyport Herald Fall 1813
 

Mary Jenkins had a little India Calico and some Factory Ginghams (which might have meant they were domestically produced.)  Sarah Emery remembered Mary Jenkins's store at another location,
"Mary Jenkins's millinery establishment was in her house on Water, corner of Market street."

Could this be the storekeeper's grave?

Mary born about 1746, died in 1837

Read more about smuggling in Newburyport at this post:

http://quilt1812warandpiecing.blogspot.com/2012/02/6-sarah-smith-emery-smuggling-english.html

Women like Lucy Bakewell Audubon, living in the far west ---Ohio and Kentucky---might have envied women in Newark, New Jersey who could shop at Moses Hedden's.

Newark Centinel of Freedom

In spring 1814, he advertised a "fresh supply of scarce and fashionable Indian and European GOODS," but he was still eager to buy or barter home woven fabrics, like these wool/cotton or wool/linen stripes below.

Linsey quilt, probably pieced

 mid-19th-century or later, but how old is the cloth?

 

Baltimore Patriot, Summer, 1813

Small "manufactories" like that of Dupont and Company in Wilmington, Delaware, shipped "superfine cloth" to stores in Baltimore. Superfine often meant wool broadcloth but they could also be weaving or printing cottons.

DuPont also made Superfine Gunpowder.

Several manufactories advertised calico printing---meaning woodblock printing on cotton or linen or combination fabrics.

New York National Advocate, 1813

One could go to Thomas Stephens & Company in lower Manhattan and leave an order for cotton yardage or a printed shawl, which would be printed to your specifications by W. Ovington.

New York Merchant Advertiser, 1813

Competitor Anthony Jones had printed vests, shawls and handkerchiefs on hand to sell. Apparently, he had more printing business than he could handle was looking for apprentices (country boys preferred.)

For more pictures of the Camden quilt see this post:

http://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2011/05/early-virginia-quilt.html