Canaan
“It’s a story of quilt lost, quilt found and quilt lost and found again,” said resident Judith Kushner, who first heard of the quilt in 1990 from a friend who had attended a lecture at the New England Quilt Museum in Lowell, Mass., that featured it. Kushner went to visit the historian who owned the quilt who let her photograph it and then bring it back to Canaan to try to learn its history.
“I tired, but I didn’t get very far,” Kushner said.
Kushner brought the quilt to the Canaan Historical Museum, but the organization could not afford to purchase it at the time. Kushner recalled the price was $250.
And that, Kushner thought, was that.
Until a few weeks ago, when the quilt was donated to the Canaan Town Library by Madeleine Kremzner, daughter of the late Louise Kremzner who had bought the quilt all those years ago. Louise Kremzner and her husband, Lee, used to own and operate the Inn on Canaan Street. Louise Kremzner died in 2015; her husband died in 2000.
“I was very happy to see that the little quilt had been returned,” Kushner said. “It was just lovely of them.”
Kushner is eager to dive back into the mystery that had intrigued her more than two decades ago, but she does not have a lot of information to go on.
The quilt measures 5 feet by 5 feet and is made up of 25 squares. The center square is of the First Baptist Church, which burned down in the Canaan Village fire of 1923. The surrounding squares feature a name or business in the center of the square, circled by up to 17 different names, all of which are embroidered in red thread on white fabric. The style, known as a Redwork Signature Quilt, was popular around the turn of the century, Kushner said, based on the research she’s done. The quilts were often made as a fundraiser, to honor a community member or to give to someone who was moving away.
“It’s not just one person who worked on this,” Kushner said. “It’s possible that each square was done by a different quilter, and maybe that person was responsible for raising money for that square.”
There are last names on the quilt — Stevens, Follansbee, Chellis, Wooster, Richardson — from families who have been in the Upper Valley for generations. The names on the center square, however, are Mr. and Mrs. Wm Paine, of Brooklyn, N.Y.
The center of one square reads “Meriden, NH, 1902” — the only clue as to the date the quilt was created, Kushner said.
It’s not clear if the quilt was made as a fundraiser, and if it was, for whom. Kushner has spent time poring over editions of the Enfield Advocate, a newspaper published during that time.
“I haven’t found anything yet that notes the quilt,” Kushner said. “We’d like to know why the quilt was made. We think it has something to do with the church, but we really can’t assume that. … I don’t think all the names on the quilt are necessarily church members.”
The First Baptist Church, which opened in 1872 and was said to be a duplicate of the First Baptist Church in Lebanon that recently burned down, was one of about 48 buildings destroyed in the fire of 1923, said town historian Donna Zani-Dunkerton.
“It was the complete downtown business district,” she said. The fire was started by children playing with matches in a building on School Street. “Back then, the buildings had wooden shingles,” Zani-Dunkerton said. “And it was a high wind that day.
“Within two hours, the complete village was gone.”
In addition to the First Baptist Church, an Advent church and a Catholic church were also lost to the fire.
“Within a year’s time, probably 24 of the buildings that had been destroyed by the fire had been rebuilt,” Zani-Dunkerton said. But the First Baptist Church was never rebuilt. The library now occupies the land where the church once stood.
“It’s quite possible that records of the church burned in 1923 along with the church,” Kushner said.
The quilt is in relatively good shape, with no rips or tears. “It was really well taken care off,” Kushner said, which adds to the mystery: Who loved it enough to take care of it for decades?
The quilt will remain at the library, and Kushner, along with library director Amy Thurber, are researching ways to best store and display it.
“Eventually it will be available to people for genealogy research,” Thurber said. “We hope to be able to preserve the quilt. And then have it available to people at different events to see if they recognize any of the names on it.”
Then the quilt that survived more than a century can live on for centuries more.
Editor’s note: For more information about the quilt, or to contribute research, contact the Canaan Town Library at circulationdesk@canaanlibrary.org or call 603-523-9650. Liz Sauchelli can be reached at esauchelli@vnews.com or 603-727-3221.
Correction
Madeleine Kremzner recently donated a quilt to the Canaan Town Library. Kremzner’s first name and the name of the library were incorrect in an earlier version of this story.
