Queen Charlotte's Crown: Centuries of Historical Inaccuracy

Queen Charlotte's Crown in Morris Muse fabrics from Moda, Morris & Me

 National Galleries of Scotland  

 Sophia Charlotte of Mecklenburg-Strelitz

 as England's new Queen, 1761 or 1762 by Allan Ramsey.

Several copies of this bride's portrait are in museums.

I have been wiling away my May afternoons reading for the second time Janice Hadlow's 2015 biography of the royal family of King George III and Queen Charlotte. Well written, flows nicely and historically supportable. Perfect. I'm only up to the year 1761 and Charlotte's marriage and I know things get tough. Mad King George had mental health issues, shall we say, all his life as far as I am concerned---no late onset porphyry. But they had a happy marriage for quite a while (if a few too many unhappy children).

Perhaps Ruth Finley noticed the Queen's royal headgear in the "Nuptial Crown" portrait when she wrote about a pieced quilt pattern "Queen Charlotte's Crown" in her 1929 book Old Patchwork Quilts.

Finley's block reflects the visual pairings in the "Nuptial Crown."

Queen Charlotte was the last of our Colonial queens and we still have a city named for her. Charlotte, North Carolina (The Queen City) boasts a sculptural portrait with crown in hand at the airport (no more historical basis for the statue than for Ruth Finley's block.)

Charlotte at about 20 with her eldest daughter

the Princess Royal.

The Nancy Cabot quilt column in the Chicago Tribune in 1933

must have used Finley's book for pattern copy.

The gray highlighted area is Finley-style "history."

Both book and newspaper column seem to have fabricated the whole quilt tale, as we might say, out of whole cloth.

The Cabot column modified Finley's design in a later issue,

eliminating the set-in seams.

Queen Charlotte's Crown was not a popular design. Certainly there are none that appear to have been stitched before Finley's 1929 publication date as the design is not the kind of thing one would see in the 18th century here or in England. After Finley published her pattern a few were done, probably because it a bit hard to sew and rather awkward in composition. 

I found a couple of mid-20th c. quilts in the Quilt Index. The Nebraska and Iowa projects recorded some stitched soon after Finley's book was out.

Mary Schafer of Michigan decided the "historical" design would be a perfect pattern for the Bicentennial collection she was stitching before our 200th birthday in 1976. The history is the sort I was raised on: Far-fetched hypotheses, questionable research (if any evidence at all) and sweet stories designed more as propaganda than accurate accounts. (Don't look now but we are living in a revival of the attitude.)

About ten years ago we stitched a Block of the Week on the Austen family of Queen Charlotte's era and included this one.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/58240246@N07/albums/72157644301168681/

Austen Family Album

From my latest Moda collection Morris Muse, inspired by Georgann's red block and the focused cutting. 

More Ideas....

Sunrise Quilts used the Nancy Cabot design recently.

Laura Conowitch at LCSCottage.wordpress.com

Blue for Charlotte's German heritage and red for her English role.

Blocks rotated

If you've been watching the streaming series Bridgerton over the past few years you

will be familiar with their plot line that Queen Charlotte was a Black woman, a concept not found in Julia Quinn's series of Bridgerton novels. 

Producers and writers running the series introduced this far-fetched idea made plausible due to the skill of the casting director who matched actor Golda Rosheuvel to the Queen's portraits. Despite her award-nominated acting the historical idea is as unlikely as Rosheuvel's hair-do.

This all seems relatively harmless and perhaps a good idea by the show runners to shake up our preconceived notions

BUT

There is a big problem in the whole concept of the German Charlotte's ancestry even as an obvious fictional trope. The idea was a principle of Nazi racial bigotry, first described in a 1920s book Racial Mixture as the Basic Principle of Life by Artur Ernst Klaar (Penname: Brunold Springer) who decided the Queen's unfashionable facial features were evidence of African ancestry.

"Nordicism," the idea of a master race, was explored in several pseudo-scientific publications in the 1920s. Books like Hans F.K. Gunther's Racial Studies of the German People impressed Himmler and Hitler, informing their ideas on white supremacy threatened by "degenerate" racial mixing. Euthanasia (the Holocaust) developed from concepts of Nordicizing the population and it continues today in unfortunate American rhetoric.

Nazi leadership was delusional about how they fit Nordicism's ideals

I have worked in the movies and know the industry pretty well through friends & family. Producers feel little obligation to give a responsible point of view based on historical accuracy. Their idea has sold well; viewers enjoy the turn-around in casting and nobody recalls Nazi sources for the pseudoscience.

But don't you forget!

Read More

https://royalwatcherblog.com/2023/11/17/queen-charlotte-nuptial-crown/

https://aelarsen.wordpress.com/2025/12/30/bridgerton-was-queen-charlotte-black/

Morris Muse: Catherine Raven Holiday

 

Collection of the William Morris Gallery Waltham

Catherine (Kate) Raven Holiday (1839-1925)

by her brother Milville Raven 1861

In 1864 Kate married painter and stained-glass artist 

Henry Holiday. They celebrated their 60th anniversary in 1924.

Embroidery attributed to Catherine Raven Holiday

Collection of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

Morris praised Kate's embroidery techniques and color skills. "I’d back your wife for heavy sums against all Europe at embroidery."

Silk cushion cover by Kate Holiday

Kate began embroidering Morris-designed textiles for Morris & Company in the mid-1870s. William Morris permitted her to commission the colors for silk thread from Thomas Wardle's mill and he allowed her to decide on stitches and techniques to fill the shapes, a show of trust in her talent.

To remember Kate Holiday, Morris's favorite artisan: A pieced star from BlockBase+ where the block is pictured without a name. "Holiday Fest" sounds good. 

Playing with the shading

Pattern above for a 12" Block

Print 8-1/2" x 11"

APPLIQUE OR EMBROIDERY

Collection of the William Morris Gallery Waltham

Table Cover designed by William Morris

Executed by Kate Holiday

92" long

Pattern inspired by Kate's embroidered piece at the Metropolitan Museum of Art

This 1890 exhibition catalog uses the word "darned" to describe Catherine's embroidery.

National Gallery of Melbourne

Design attributed to Kate's husband Henry Holiday

Stitching to Kate

Transposed Quilts: More Ideas on the Term

 

New York Project, Relyea family, Ulster County

A Transposed Quilt????

A few weeks ago I posted about my search for "Transposed Quilts" mentioned in agricultural fair records after 1850 or so. What did that term mean?

https://barbarabrackman.blogspot.com/2026/04/transposed-quilts.html

Since then Louise Tiemann and I have been looking for the words "Transposed Quilt" in 19th-century publications, finding some repetitive how-to copy telling us that Transposed Quilts are a rather medieval style of applique similar to what we call "intarsia" today.

Louise found this reference in an American needlework book.

The old European textile technique works best with sturdy wool fabrics. 

U.S. museums have a few imported early examples but intarsia applique

 (or is it piecing?) is rarely seen here.

And it certainly has little to do with the kind of needlework winning prizes at New York agricultural fairs in the 1850s, those we see described as "transposed quilts."

With no definitions apparent Louise and I examined the context in which we found the words "transposed quilt."

It may be important that we see the earliest references in upstate New York.

Typical mid-19th c. quilt in fashionable style.

Oak Leaf and Reel attributed to 

Mary Hasbrouck Wilklow of Ellenville, Ulster County

New York project & the Quilt Index

Buffalo's 1857 newspaper tells us that Mrs. P. Staats won a first at the fair, topping Mrs. J. W. Brown who received a second and a third award for "Best transposed quilt." Mrs. Brown would be hard to find but Mrs. P Staats with her rather unusual Dutch name was easy to track.

Permelia Staats living at 117 Franklin in Buffalo's city center.,

Widow of Barent J. Staats.

Permelia's generation boasted several Barent Staats, one Mayor of Albany in the early 1840s. Her husband's Staats family had been in New York and earlier New Netherland for centuries with American family founders Abraham and Trijntje Staats arriving in what would become Albany in 1642.

Map of New Netherland before it became New York in the 1660s

Hudson River in red near Fort Orange--

later Albany---center of Dutch colonization.

The other clue in the context we noticed was the lack of the word "applique" in the list of style categories. It may very well be that "transposed" means appliqued. Louise found more information on Mrs. J. W. Brown's quilts identifying one as a "chintz applique' when it was entered but her prize was awarded in the "transposed quilt" category. We both think the odd term meant "applique quilt" among that group of upstate needlewomen who were familiar with three types of quilted bedcovers, described below in the list of New York fair winners with representative examples of each .

3 QUILT STYLES

It's also important to our conclusions that we find the term first in the New York area that was so persistently Dutch.

New York Historical Society

Petrus Stuyvesant 

Most Americans know of a single Dutch colonist, one-legged Peter Stuyvesant 

who surrendered New Netherland to the British in the 1660s.

Inheritors of Dutch culture have been ignored in American history with English descendants dominating politically and culturally for the past 400 years. 

Yet, Dutch culture, folkways and language have long survived in New York from Flatbush north to Niagara.

Red and green applique quilts shown here seem typical of those made by New Yorkers of Dutch ancestry about 200 years after New Netherland became New York.

My guess is that the term "transposed quilt" is regional English with roots in Dutch language and needlework classification systems that began in the home of the Dutch New Yorkers. The unusual name was used in a few other places as the century continued.

Lancaster County, Pennsylvania word use: 3 categories for prize winners:

Silk, calico and transposed.

Silk quilt [e.g. crazy etc.], Cotton pieced? and appliqued?

The whole search is Louise's and my idea of a good time. We do love those old newspapers.