The Seamstresses' Quilt

Slothower Family Quilt

Baltimore Maryland

National Museum of American History

The Smithsonian has a new book Smithsonian American Women: Remarkable Objects and Stories of Strength, Ingenuity, and Vision from the National Collection, which features this quilt. Curators Madeline Shaw and Nancy Bercaw wrote the caption telling us the quilt came from the Baltimore family of George Slothower (1802-1877), donated by Doris Eccles Slothower who included family history that the quilt was made by German-born servants and seamstresses. It has been called The Seamstresses' Quilt.

We might guess the quilt was from Maryland with its basket center

arranged in a square placed on point and the dogtooth appliqued borders.

The 1860 census found George and wife Emma Myers Slothower living with relatives John and Adeline Slothower and three servants: one an African-American teenager named John Johnson and two young German women. Dora Frank and Christena Little may have been the seamstresses associated with the quilt.

1856 ad. 

The Slothowers were in the fabric business; George in the mid-19th century was a wholesale dry goods merchant with Slothower, Matthews & Company at 273 West Baltimore. The family lived at 315 Lexington near the corner of Eutaw Street. George, George E., William & John Slothower also were in the cotton milling business with factories called Powhattan and Pocohontas Mills producing cotton duck or osnaburg, a coarse cotton fabric.

Baltimore Street in the 1870s

Maryland Historical Society

We can find a lot out about George Slothower (father & son?), one of whom were in the Maryland House of Delegates and developers of residential houses still standing on Callender and Lombard Streets, but the women---

https://americanhistory.si.edu/collections/search/object/nmah_556585

Lexington/Eutaw neighborhood today

See a preview of the book:
Smithsonian American Women: Remarkable Objects and Stories of Strength, Ingenuity, and Vision from the National Collection
https://books.google.com/books?id=DIiVDwAAQBAJ&source=gbs_navlinks_s