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Sunday, October 23, 2005

Blanket of Love

Bertha ran three miles cross-country, through fields, brush, coulees, and creeks.  She was running to get help for her son.  Her son, August, lay dead from one swift kick in the head from a horse’s hoof.  This happened the year of 1925.
After Bertha’s husband died in Minnesota at age 37, Grandma Bertha and her three children are assumed to have moved from Minnesota to a homestead in Montana in 1896.  This homestead is where Bertha’s only son died, leaving her two daughters.  Living in a tarpaper shack with a cellar beneath, Bertha raised a robust garden to supply her family with food year-round and was generous enough to supply neighbors with vegetables when they were in need.  Although she would help anyone who required it, she was said to be an ornery widow.  This proved true only in the sense that she was a very assertive woman and men considered that to be an unattractive personality trait in “ladies”, hence it was spurned.  When asked why she did not remarry, she would say that she had no use for a man that would only put his feet up on the stove while she did all the work.  Grandma Bertha also raised milk cows and chickens. 
Through the 1900’s farm and ranch spreads north of Chester were a popular area for raising livestock.  By the late 1980’s and 1990’s most flocks of sheep had been replaced by herds of cattle.  In the times when sheep thrived within the area where Bertha lived, she would walk along the fence lines, gathering wool from barbs on the wire.  She then brought the wool home and washed it.  After washing it, she performed the rigorous task of carding the wool.  She used this wool for batting in large quilts.  Of many quilts that she sewed, one was given to a neighbor soon after he arrived in America.  The quilt was well used and as a result, another local resident, Ina Furlong, recovered it.  The quilt’s owner passed away and many years later this quilt was given to me, Bertha’s great great granddaughter. 
For me, this quilt is much more than just a family tie.  It is an honor to possess a visible piece of my family history that has been passed down for generations.  Through the stories that I have gathered about Bertha, I realize that she was an extremely hard worker and a very tough woman.  I see similarities in her and in my father and some of the same in my siblings, yet the resemblances are fading due to worldly changes in society’s principles and expectations.  For the most part, this bulky re-covered quilt gives me the opportunity to ask questions about my ancestors and learn from their experiences. 

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