Ohio Star Signature Quilt

In addition to the practical purposes they served, early American quilts function as records of the communities of women who made them. This quilt was begun by Laura Mahan, who attended the Oberlin Collegiate Institute (later Oberlin College) from 1847 to 1848, when she died at the age of fifteen. Her stepmother Sarah took on the task of finishing the quilt, using pieces of Laura’s dresses for the star patterns within each square. The quilt maker’s signature block makes clear that Sarah intended it to be a mourning quilt commemorating her stepdaughter’s death. Inscriptions of poems, elegiac passages, and lines from scripture from Laura’s friends and family embellish the object, creating a therapeutic product of communal mourning and an intensely personal symbol of the deceased child. The inscribed bequest is a rare and poignant indication of the desire to ensure that this beloved object be handed down among the women in the family.

Signature block inscription: This quilt, commenced by our dear Laura & finished by me, principally from fragments of her dresses, I give & bequeath unto her sister Julia M. Woodruff, or in case of her death to her sister Hila M. Hall, if she survives, otherwise to the oldest surviving granddaughter of their father, Artemas Mahan deceased.

Oberlin Feb. 6, 1851

Sarah Mahan.