It probably never covered a bed or was wrapped around cold shoulders, but a 121-year -old quilt is a newfound treasure. Stitched into its multicolored designs is a piece signed by President Rutherford B. Hayes. His inked name is at the quilt's center: "R.B. Hayes 1880."
The former president is not the only one who signed the quilt, found in a Seattle second-hand shop and now safe in the Rutherford B. Hayes Presidential Center.
The quilt has 52 autographs of some of the most famous and important people of 1880.
Some quilt pieces were signed by:
- Morrison Waite, chief justice of the Supreme Court.
- John Sherman, secretary of the treasury in 1880.
- Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the women's suffrage movement's most active spokeswoman.
- William Wheeler, Hayes's vice president.
"It's quite a prize for us to have," said Roger Bridges, director of the Hayes Center. "It's a good example of workmanship typical of that rich period of American history."
The quilt was dropped off by an unknown person at a thrift store run by Seattle Children's Hospital. An alert secretary spied the former president's signature.
When an acceptable offer was not received in Internet auction, the Hayes center scraped up $10,000 to buy it, Tom Culbertson, head of the center's history and education department, said. The quiltt will be preserved and put on display.
"We're trying to find clues to where it came from, and how all those people came to have signatures on it," Culbertson said. The pieces likely were signed at different times, over a period, and stitched onto the quilt.
Six Supreme Court justices seem to have used the same ink pen to sign fabric, suggesting they were handed the cloth at one time, Culbertson said. One square contains signed names of ministers from Great Britain, France, and Portugal. The best preserved signature of all is that of "Dr. Joseph Leidy, Prof. Univ. of Penna", a paleontologist who was called the finest American naturalist of the 19th century.
William Evarts, Hayes's secretary of state, signed in, as did famed Sen. James G. Blaine, who lost the 1876 presidential nomination to Hayes. Waite was chief justice from 1874 until his 1888 death. Hayes often traveled to Toledo to visit Waite. Sherman was Hayes's secretary of the treasury and later was secretary of state. Stanton organized the first women's rights convention and convinced the Senate to introduce a constitutional amendment to allow women to vote.
"We've tried to find a common event, like a state dinner, where President Hayes , senators, and others might have been together and signed," Culbertson said.
The quilt likely sat in a trunk for many years, he said. The Hayes center estimates it will take $5,000 to prepare it for proper, protected display to the public.
Two signatures on the quilt are most curious. One is: "Isaac Bassett, Asst. Doorkeeper , U.S. Senate." Culbertson said, "Another one stumped us for a while," pointing to "R.J. Bright...we wondered: Who the heck was that? Then, in records, I found his name as the Senate's sergeant-at-arms. We theorize that those men were given cloth and told to get signatures from senators. The two men may have had leftover pieces so they simply signed them, too."
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