Graveyard Quilts
by Kelly Ann Butterbaugh
They’re in our closets, on our beds, and part of our lives. They’re quilts, and their purposes and styles offer endless varieties. Some are created to convey a message, such as the pattern Drunkard’s Path during the time of Prohibition, and some are created more for their visual appeal.
One type of quilt known as the mourning quilt enjoyed great popularity in the second half of the nineteenth century before falling out of favor. Made during the period following the death of a loved one, the mourning quilt not only commemorated the dead but also offered healing for those left behind. One story is of a young mother who was so distraught over losing an infant daughter that her husband took her to sit with other women and quilt as a way of easing her grief. From this death was born the mourning quilt in all of its varieties.
It is hard to say what constitutes traditional style mourning quilts; their only consistency was their purpose. However, one type of mourning quilt is clear in its style—the Graveyard Quilt. This type of quilt was made in select areas of Kentucky, Tennessee, West Virginia, and Ohio for only a short period during the mid-nineteenth century. Sewn with the purpose of preserving family records, the quilts were considered to be more permanent than any paper recording.
Aptly named, these Graveyard or Coffin Quilts featured the macabre image of a center “graveyard” filled with and surrounded by six sided coffins. The quilt itself was usually made in black or gray fabrics, and some had a center star design while others had actual fence designs surrounding the graveyard. The coffins, usually black, paraded around the edge until the family member whose name was embroidered on the coffin died. Upon that person’s death coffins which were merely basted along the edge were then lifted and appliquéd into the graveyard where they received an embroidered death date. The rest of the quilt featured a variety of patterns including the popular “black darts of death,” a triangular dart motif, and heavily embroidered vines. Like their family of mourning quilts, there were no set rules for the creation of a Graveyard Quilt. One Ohio quilt was made with various shades of purple rather than blacks and grays.
What created these unique quilt patterns? One possible influence was the birth of modern cemeteries. Traditionally, family members were buried upon family land in small clusters of graves. However, during the time period of the Graveyard Quilt, the urban cemetery began to crawl towards the rural landscape. The new cemeteries were park-like and created for both the living and the dead; therefore, the placement of graveyards on quilts in the nineteenth century lacked the morbidity that it does today.
The best known Graveyard Quilt today, known as the Kentucky Coffin Quilt, features a picket fence that surrounds the graveyard, a heavily embroidered trellis of roses, angels, and a path leading to the center cemetery, also surrounded by a picket fence. Eight pointed stars complete the pattern which is made in shades of browns and whites created from walnut hull dyes. Housed at the Kentucky Historical Society, this quilt was made in Lewis County, KY by Elizabeth Roseberry Mitchell in 1839 to commemorate the passing of two sons. A native of Pennsylvania, she and her daughters, Sarah and Elizabeth, completed the quilt the year that her second son, nineteen-year-old Matthais, died. He was predeceased by an infant brother, John Vanetta in 1836. The quilt was donated to the museum by Roseberry’s great-granddaughter in 1959.
While only a handful of these Graveyard Quilts can be found today, they preserve a different view of death. What might be viewed as macabre today is a historic representation of the belief that the dead were only “temporarily absent,” and the quilts served as a connection between the living and the dead.
