"LaFayette Orange Peel"
Rhode Island Project & the Quilt Index
Signed Amanda Dodge (Rose)
About 1875, Block Island
See more quilts here:
An 1824 set of playing cards featured French aristocrat
Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, as the Ace of Spades
In 1824 Americans became celebrity-crazed when the hero of the
Revolution was invited to tour the U.S. at our expense.
Maine Memory Network
Gilbert du Motier (1757–1834)
By Orramel Hinkley Throop
The name Lafayette Orange Peel was published by Ruby Short McKim in her 1929 book 101 Quilt Patterns where she told us that the pattern name is associated with the Marquis who had come as a young man to the American colonies to fight and fund the American Revolution.
Over the years the "history" expanded. We never find the name of the Philadelphian but the citrus story has expanded to the idea that Lafayette impressed the guests by deftly peeling an orange with his penknife. From a recent blog post:
Stories about the above festivities in Virginia are also the only pre-1900 reference to the linked words Lafayette and orange in Newspapers.com's enormous print file.
It's certainly not the equivalent of the false history told in the "Quilt Code" tales of the Underground Railroad. But as with that problematic story: Bad history tends to drive out good. I bet very few of you are familiar with the material culture of Lafayette's tour over 200 years ago.
McKim 1929
McKim "proudly [added] the name of 'Lafayette' " to the Ladies' Art Company's older name of Orange Peel to commemorate the return of the Marquis as "the Nation's Guest" where he was feted in cities large and small.
Triumphal Arch in Philadelphia
"The story is....in Philadelphia a fair guest at the banquet took home a most beautiful fruit as her souvenir...To preserve her treasure and the memory of the day a pattern was carefully made from the pared rind...." McKim
New Jersey project & the Quilt Index
Lambertville Historical Society
"Lafayette chose an orange, which he cut into four segments before he peeled it. One of the female guests later picked up the discarded segments and, in honour of the French hero, used them as the basis for her next quilt pattern."
Is there any truth to this story? I found a recent history of the 1824 return tour, Ryan L. Coles's The Last Adieu: Lafayette’s Triumphant Return, the Echoes of Revolution, and the Gratitude of the Republic, published in September.
Orange Added
The only references to the word "orange" in the book mention the arboreal Southern landscape and the county of Orange in Virginia where the population gave him a memorable reception recorded in an 1824 issue of the Washington Gazette.
Stories about the above festivities in Virginia are also the only pre-1900 reference to the linked words Lafayette and orange in Newspapers.com's enormous print file.
Delaware Project, date-inscribed 1840
with five sets of initials
So here I am ranting about a historical attribution of very little consequence.
Hubert VerMehren sold quilt patterns in the 1930s,
adopting McKim's "Historical" name.
Collection: Massachusetts Historical Society
One of several surviving leather gloves
sold as souvenirs of the occasion for women
Scottish Rite Museum
And men
Silk sash
Lafayette College has a huge collection of Lafayette-related items including textiles:
Detail of a bandana or scarf
Surviving in two colorways (the blue one may be a repro.)
"Welcome Lafayette"
The National Museum of American History owns this cut paper tribute
Collection: Museum of the American Revolution
For your blue and white transfer ware collection
Robert E. Lee's tutor Benjamin Hallowell of Alexandria, Virginia penned a verse about the tour of the era:
"Each Lover of Liberty surely must get
Something in honor of Lafayette
There's a La Fayette Watch Chain, a La Fayette hat
A Lafayette this and a La Fayette that'
A few more.....
International Quilt Museum
2009_039_0009
Newark Museum
Attributed to the Nichols family of Newark,
first considered to be about 1800
but fabrics and style later.
The Wyoming Project recorded this recent version stitched by Merle Fox in Indiana.
