Quilt and Women's History Books by Linda Otto Lipsett

One of several books described at the site:

Remember Me
by Linda Otto Lipsett

Women & Their Friendship Quilts

The definitive book on friendship quilts, Remember Me: Women & Their Friendship Quilts is an intimate portrait of eight nineteenth-century quiltmakers The lives of these women are all different, yet they are all shaped by birth, death, religion and war. Many of the women in this book, like Sarah S. Evans on her farm in Ohio, Betsey Wright Lee in a clapboard house in Connecticut and Fannie Cord Harris in her rock house in Kansas, were strong -- survivors despite their tragedies and hardships. Others, like twenty-two-year-old Ellen Spaulding Reed in the Wisconsin wilderness and thirty-eight-year-old Lucy Blowers Tolford, died young, of disease and loneliness.

This book is the culmination of years of thorough and meticulous research by the author. Linda Otto Lipsett has traveled America, logging thousands of miles, chronicling the lives of the ninetennth-century quiltmakers presented in this book. Begun as an investigation of her friendship quilt collection, her considerable reading about nineteenth-century American life and customs led her to interview historians, genealogists, goverment officials and descendants of the quiltmakers. She has dug through stacks of local histories and state and federal government files. Having immersed herself in the historical record, her research ultimately led her onto the quiltmakers' lands and into their homes; she has sat in their kitchens and walked the footpaths they trod. She has read their existing diaries and letters. To the extent that is possible, she has gotten to know the women whose lives she re-creates in this book. Based upon her prodigious research, Linda Otto Lipsett has produced evocative historical narratives that go beyond the dry record of history. As a result, she has written a book that is important not only to quilt aficionados but also to women and men who wish to know about our female ancestors.

11/8/1998