Quilting A tie that BINDS-Quilt has special meaning for family

Seven-year-old Noah Millard concentrates on his quilting technique as he works along with his mother, grandmother and great-grandmother on the log cabin design quilt. The quilt top was the sixth pieced for the family by Clydene Davenport.

Many of this generation possibly don’t realize the importance of quilts in our history, or even our future. Most of our parents saw quilts as a necessity, but also as an avenue to express their creative and artistic talents.

Quilting is almost a lost art now, but the few left who quilt are preserving a part of our heritage. Miriam Hitchcock Crawford comes from a long line of quilters, and continues to pass on the tradition to her grandchildren. She has had a log cabin quilt pieced for each of her six children, crafted by retired teacher and master quilt maker Clydene Barnett Davenport. Clydene married Fred Davenport in 1947, and the two enjoyed 54 years of marriage before he passed away.

The two quilt lovers have a long history together, as Davenport is 88 years old and the last living granddaughter of Harmon York, politician, landowner and businessman, who was born in 1810. Crawford’s mother Emma Grissom Hitchcock, 81, is also a descendent of Harmon York, and Crawford is a descendent through both the maternal and paternal lines. Imagine a man born almost 200 years ago, with the new city of McMinnville 3 years old at his birth, having a living grandchild.

The last log cabin quilt top produced by Davenport has been lovingly quilted by four generations of Hitchcock family members ‘ Emma Hitchcock, Miriam Crawford, Mary Beth Crawford Millard and her son Noah Millard, 7. The quilt features 80 blocks, with approximately an hour of quilting time required to complete each block. That adds up to 80 hours of sitting together, talking, sharing and hearing stories from the past, or even catching up on the present.

The completed quilt has been approved by Davenport, praising the quilters for their talents. ‘They brought the quilt by for me to see, and they did a good job finishing it,’ said Davenport.

Davenport has been quilting over 80 years and estimates having made 400 quilts, having made her first stitches while helping her mother at seven years of age.

‘My mother always kept a quilt up in the winter to work on, and she let me start when I was quite young. She always said every stitch I put in, was one she didn’t have to,’ laughs Davenport.

Not many quilts can boast such a history in the making as Crawford’s does. A quilt produced by Harmon York’s second-generation granddaughter, fourth-generation descendent, and double fifth-, sixth- and seventh-generation descendants help keep our history alive.

As McMinnville celebrates its 200th birthday, the town lives in the cherished quilt.