I have a letter from a DAR Quilt researcher regarding a Hannah Thomas Chrisman or a Hannah Thomas Chrisman Lee. It is a long letter, detailing research that has already been done to find the maker of a quilt which is in the DAR museum. The writer, Deborah Cooney, has given me permission to share her letter, as for some reason, I had entered the initial profile for Hannah Thomas Chrisman. (Chrisman-471) while I was searching for my own Thomas ancestors, but had only entered details from the grave memorial.
Are there any researchers in the Quaker Project who would like to take this on, or who could help me direct Deborah Cooney?
A partial excerpt from her letter defines the issue:
I am a quilt researcher at the DAR Museum in Washington, DC.
A quilt in our collection with the initials HTC and date 1833 is the subject of new research. I have discovered that the likely maker is either Hannah Thomas Chrisman or Hannah Thomas Chrisman Lee. All of the Quaker records I've seen have the older Hannah dying in 1816, well before the quilt's date. As you have noted, Find a Grave puts the birth dates of two of her children as 1822 (Rebecca) and 1824 (Hannah), meaning she lived at least until 1824. Isaac was born to the Isaac's second wife 11 years later, leaving a large gap.
If the older Hannah lived until 1833, the initials on the quilt would be hers. Young Hannah would have been nine years old in 1833; quiltmakers that young are possible if they had help. If any more information surfaces on the death date of the elder Hannah, I would be grateful to have it for our narrative on the background of this quilt.
See the quilt in the Quilt Index file:
http://www.quiltindex.org/fulldisplay.php?kid=46-7A-15F
and my conclusions about the maker:
The donors of the Diamond Square quilt were collectors, so no family provenance accompanied the quilt. A woven tape attached to the quilt has a typed inscription: "Made in 1833/owned by/Mrs. C.E. Hedden." Handwritten notes in the file (unidentified author) state that the last family owner was Martha Lee Swain, born 1890s, of Bucks County, Pa. Her ancestors were said to be member of the Chandler and Lee families of Berks County, Pa., and Tuckertown, N.J. Martha was said to the great-granddaughter of Martha Lee of Tuckertown, N.J., born in the 1790s, and that both the Pennsylvania and New Jersey branches of the family were Quakers.