Saturday, January 17, 2009

State Quilt Books

Yesterday, I went to a quilt show and shopped at one of my favorite vendors, Quilting Books Unlimited, (http://www.qbu.com/), he sells books on everything to do with quilts. I'm interested in quilt history so I always find some great books at his booth.

Anyway, I was browsing and was looking at a book, North Carolina Quilts. This book, like many others is based on a statewide quilt documenting project. A history of quilting in the state plus pictures of quilts, their makers, and some bio information is given. Many states did these books and you can usually find them through some of the bigger booksellers.

I was looking through the index and there was one of my ancestor's surnames. A member of this Chatham family, Alexander Chatham helped found the Chatham Mills in Elkin. There was some information about the mill and an early picture of the mill's building and employees.

These books are a treasure trove and are an unlikely source of genealogical information. This is one example of a hidden genealogy resource for researching female ancestors.

For a bibliography of these books, see the website Quilt History at http://www.quilthistory.com/state.htm.

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