6 A Tale of Two Quilts

           

Gertrude and my father, Ralph 

Paternal Grandmother Gertrude  Susan Goldsmith Wallis

52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks

Week 6 – February 3, 2025

Prompt: Surprise

Gertrude “Gertie” Susan Goldsmith Wallis is my paternal grandmother. We share the same middle name.

She was born on September 2, 1888, near Huntsville, Madison County, Arkansas. Her parents, David Milton Goldsmith and Nancy Dudgeon Goldsmith, lived in Sedan, Kansas, but were in Arkansas visiting Nancy’s parents for the summer. While out running errands in town, Nancy—pregnant with Gertie—was caught in a flood. She managed to cut the horses loose from the wagon, but everything else was lost.

Gertie was born prematurely the next morning. Family lore says she was so tiny that her father’s ring could fit over her head. To keep her warm, they placed her in a box lined with carded wool and set it in the warming oven. She slept in a dresser drawer for a crib, and against all odds, she survived.

In 1903, she moved with her parents to Indian Territory.

Meanwhile, Charles Bertram (C.B.) Wallis was in Manila, Phillipines, fighting in the Spanish-American War. His next plan was to go to Panama and work on the Panama Canal, but before leaving, he visited his brother in Creek County, Oklahoma. There, he met Gertie—and was so taken with her that he abandoned his plan to go to Panama. Instead, he stayed and began working in the burgeoning oil industry. The two married in Creek County in 1910. After living on several oil leases in Oklahoma, they moved to Homer, Louisiana where my father was born, and then El Dorado, Arkansas where my father is from.

C.B. and Gertrude Wedding Photo

C.B. Wallis, Spanish American War

I never knew Gertie. After a long illness, she passed away from complications of diabetes mellitus and hypertension on August 16, 1943, in El Dorado, Arkansas. My father was seventeen years old at the time. 

 

C.B. and Stella honeymoon in Hot Springs, Arkansas

In December 1945, two years after Gertie's passing, my grandfather, C.B. Wallis, remarried. His new wife, Stella Dean Morgan, had been Gertie's companion and caretaker after she lost her eyesight due to diabetes.

Stella, or Mam Maw, as I knew her, gave me a quilt top when I was about 12 years old. She apologized, saying her frail hands could no longer quilt. I cherished that quilt top and kept it in a cedar chest that my grandfather, C.B. Wallis, made for me. It had started as my toy chest but later became my “hope chest.”

I often took the quilt top out just to study the fabrics. 

Mam Maw, Libby Wallis, Sarah Beth Kinard, Storm Wallis, Margaret Nolen Wallis

When I came home for Christmas during my first year of college, my mother surprised me—she had the quilt top machine quilted. From that point on, the quilt went everywhere with me.

• It was the quilt I kept on my bed.

• I curled up with it when I was sick.

• I took it to outdoor concerts and picnics.

• It even has a cigarette burn from a former boyfriend (boy, if that quilt could talk!).

Now that I truly understand what a treasure it is, I only bring it out for display.

Quilt top was made by Stella Dean Morgan Wallis

Knowing my passion for collecting vintage quilts, my father shared memories of quilting bees in South Arkansas during the 1930s and ’40s, when his mother made Double Wedding Ring and Grandmother’s Flower Garden quilts. My mother remembered that when she married my father in 1944, he still had one of Gertie’s quilts—but she says it simply got used up. No one in my mother’s family quilted, or even sewed, so I didn’t grow up with family quilts.

Before I got the genealogy bug, I shared my quilt collection with quilting guilds. I would always start the program with this quilt, telling the quilters that this was the most meaningful quilt in my collection—not because of its condition or style, but because it was my first quilt and, at the time, my only family quilt.

Then, a few years ago, I got a surprise.

My cousin, Nella, told me she had one of our grandmother’s quilts. I was stunned to learn that one of Gertie’s quilts had survived in the family.

When I visited Nella, she showed me the quilt—and to my surprise, it was pieced in the same pattern as the one Mam Maw had given me.

Quilt made by Gertrude Susan Goldsmith Wallis

I have a good fabric memory and I recognized that some of the fabrics in Nella's quilt were the same as those in mine, for example, the blue with white polka dots shown here.

Blue polka dot in Mam Maw's quilt

Blue polka dot in Gertie's quilt

I was thrilled with the possibility that my quilt, rather than being Mam Maw’s work, may have been made by my grandmother, Gertie. Or perhaps the two quilted together and shared fabrics.

I wasn’t sure if Mam Maw was a quilter herself, so I wrote to her daughter, Sarah Beth, and asked. I wanted to know if she quilted and, if so, whether she ever quilted with Gertie.

She responded:

“Yes, Mother was a really fine quilter. She learned from my Grandmother Dean, who was a wonderful quilter. Mother worked on quilts at the Christian Church. Your Grandmother Wallis could have quilted with my mother. Several of the church ladies made quilts and sold them for church money.”

When I shared this with my father, he told me that during the Great Depression, the church had been on the verge of foreclosure, and a group of women—called “The Willing Workers”—had quilted to raise money to save the building. My father had been the one they sent to the local department store to buy batting for their quilts.

So, I’ve come to the wonderful conclusion that the ladies of the church shared fabrics and that Gertie and Mam Maw quilted together.

When my cousin Nella was preparing to move to a care facility, she made sure her brother John knew that Gertie’s quilt should come to me.

And now, I have not just one, but two precious family quilts:

• One made by my step-grandmother, Mam Maw

• One made by my grandmother, Gertie

Mam Maw's Quilt

Gertie's Quilt

As I sleep beneath the warmth of a cherished quilt, my grandmothers watch over me, whispering their stories in the language of dreams.