Ella Mae Packard of Lisbon doesn’t know what drew her to the roadside auction in 1975. Packard was on a road trip to Damariscotta with her husband, Robert.
“We were going to Round Top for ice cream, and there was an auction across the street,” Packard remembered. “We don’t go to auctions as a rule, and I don’t remember what else was being auctioned.”
There, she was drawn to an album quilt in the shoo-fly pattern and what is believed to be a companion quilt. She bid $5 and won the album quilt. She took the companion quilt for $1.
Upon inspection of her purchase, Packard realized the signature blocks — which is what makes it an album quilt — dated 1854-1864, which is seven years before the Civil War through close to the end of the conflict.
“Someone did a good job. This was all handsewn,” Packard, who has a masters degree in textile and design, pointed out.
Along with the signatures and dates, the women included the town where they lived as the quilt was being constructed, Duxbury, Mass.
Since that summer day, the quilt had been in storage for safe keeping. Around the beginning of July, Packard decided the quilt should go back to its rightful home and she and her husband contacted the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society, offering to donate the quilt.
“It has no connection to my family, so there is no reason for me to hold on to it,” Packard said. “We’re just sending this to where it belongs.”
On Sunday, July 21, Packard and her husband, along with daughter, Valerie Giles, from North Andover, Mass., and Giles’ son, Cole, donated the quilt to Erin McGough, Collections Manager at the historical society.
“It’s absolutely a Duxbury quilt,” McGough said a few days after receiving the quilt from the three generations of Packards.
McGough confirmed the names are historically prominent in the seaside community, and even one of the museums in Duxbury was the home of Elizabeth Bradford, who signed the quilt “E.H. Bradford” on December 6, 1859.
“Friends and family would make squares for this type of quilt and gift it to a person for a wedding, a birth or as they moved away,” McGough said. “Making this quilt was very much an act of love and devotion.”
The historical society will try to determine to whom the quilt was given and will preserve the quilt as best possible. Though one mystery may never be solved: How did the 159-year-old-quilt end up in Maine?
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- Robert and Ella Mae Packard look over the Civil War-era quilt they bought at a 1975 auction for $5 in Damariscotta. The Lisbon couple recently donated it to the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society in Duxbury, Mass., the town where the quilt was constructed from 1854-1864. The quilt is known as an album quilt because pieces were signed by those possibly sewing the quilt and generally given to a loved one on a momentous occasion.
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- A square on a Civil War-era quilt Ella Mae Packard purchased in Damariscotta in 1975 was signed by a possible creator, Rebecca Alden of Duxbury, Mass., in 1864. “I wonder if there will be any descendants of the names still down there,” Packard said before donating the quilt to the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society on July 21.
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- Erin McGough, collections manager at the Duxbury Rural and Historical Society, unwraps the Civil War-era quilt donated to the seaside community south of Boston on July 21. “We want to express our thanks to the Packards,” McGough said via phone after receiving the quilt. “It was exceptional that they thought of us and went to the trouble to bring it down here.”
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