Description:
Cotton and linen whitework "Bolton" coverlet with the initials "LE" and date, "1814." According to the donor, the coverlet belonged to Lydia Emerson (1792-1873), the daughter of Willard Emerson (1762-1847) and Rosina Marsh (b.1765) of Thompson, Connecticut, and the family story was that it was made for her by an itinerant weaver(s) for her wedding to John Mallalieu (1785-1871) in 1818. Instead, the coverlet was likely professionally woven upon commission by the couple. The coverlet descended in the family to Lydia and John's daugher Sarah Louise Mallalieu (1824-1915) who married Joseph Radcliff Lawton of Ware, Massachusetts, in 1844; to their daughter Florence Mallalieu Lawton (b.1859) who married David Benson Furber (1845-1915) in 1887, and who was the donor's paternal grandmother, mother of the donor's father, Franklin Butler Furber (b.1890), and left the donor the coverlet. Although more difficult to keep clean, white domestic textiles, especially those made from cotton, could be easily laundered.
Link to share this object record:
https://museums.fivecolleges.edu/detail.php?t=objects&type=ext&id_number=HD+2001.47 |
