Whenever I discover something I have in common with an ancestor, it helps me connect with them in a different, deeper way. One of my favorite pastimes is sewing so the topic for Week 20 of 52 Ancestors in 52 Weeks, Textiles, is one I can relate to. Naturally, most of our female ancestors sewed, just as most of them gardened, and cooked. It was necessary. That doesn’t mean they enjoyed it, but some of them did have a knack or a passion for one or more of those domestic chores and were able to create beautiful things. My great-great grandmother, Annie (Shaw) Turner, was one of them.
My brother contacted a second cousin we had never met, and he generously shared some family pictures and history with us, including this crazy quilt square which was donated to the Vienna Historical Society in Vienna, Maine. My father’s cousin, Jeanette (Waite) Daly, found it in her parents’ old home in 2000, and she believed it was the handiwork of her great-grandmother, Annie, who lived with them when she was young. You can look at this quilt square over and over and find yourself drawn to a new element each time. She joined the different textures, patterns, and colors together with a variety of decorative stitches, and added embroidered details to certain pieces. The little embroidered owl speaks to me the most because I have a small sewing business and my logo is an owl. As someone who loves to sew, I recognize that passion in another’s work. Someone who sewed strictly out of necessity never could have created such a gorgeous piece. This is the work of someone with passion. It’s art.
Annie, born on May 14, 1852 in Oakland, Maine, was the youngest daughter of Greenlief Owen Shaw and Jane Felker. Her mother and a sister died when she was 10, and she lost another sister the following year. Her father remarried a year after her mother’s death and added four more daughters to the family. Although I can’t locate the family on every census (and Annie is not shown on the 1870 census with her father and stepmother) they seemed to settle in Waterville prior to Jane’s death. There is an Annie Shaw in what appears to be a boarding house in Portland, Maine on the 1870 census. She’s the correct age and listed as a milliner. It’s possible this is our Annie. The millinery profession was one of the few woman-dominated trades and required both skill and artistry – traits evidently possessed by our Annie.
She married Eugene H. Turner, in Belgrade, Maine in 1872. The newlyweds joined Eugene’s parents on their Mount Vernon farm, and their three sons were born there – my great-grandfather, Stanley Lester Turner (1875-1944), Walter Greenlief Turner (born and died in 1878) and Harry Eugene Turner (1893-1929). As a farmer’s wife, I’m sure Annie worked hard and was kept busy. She likely took care of her in-laws as they aged, since they all lived together on the farm and Eugene was the only child who lived to adulthood. They were married for a whopping 65 years, which is impressive by any measure, but back then when the human lifespan was shorter, it was especially unusual.
I learned from my second cousin that in 1924 when Annie’s granddaughter, Edith, was 16, she left her home in Amesbury, Massachusetts, and moved to Mount Vernon to help her grandparents on the farm. Eugene was ill at the time, but eventually recovered.
Annie and Edith forged a close relationship during this time. Annie must have loved having granddaughters after raising boys and she likely relied on Edith when Eugene was sick. Eventually, Edith’s parents, Stanley and Emilie, also relocated from Amesbury and moved back to the family farm.
I can’t Back-To-The-Future myself to that 1930s farm to confirm what kind of a relationship Stanley had with his parents or Emilie had with her in-laws, but reading between the lines of the information that was shared, it sounds tense. When Eugene passed away in 1937, Annie approached Edith with a proposal. She offered to give Edith and her husband of a few years, Norman Waite, money to buy a farm in Vienna if she could live with them for the rest of her life. How many 85-year-old women would walk away from their home of 65 years if they were in a happy and stable environment? Probably none. I can only conclude that a fresh start with Edith and Norman was preferable to life in familiar surroundings with her son and daughter-in-law, which says a lot about both couples – Edith & Norman and Stanley & Emilie. Stanley’s reaction says even more about him, as poor Edith faced some unpleasant backlash from her father when he learned of his mother’s plan. He blamed Edith for taking advantage of his mother -- a telling reaction that speaks to his character as both a father and a son. As a father, he should have been happy his daughter was given greater financial stability early in her married life. As a son, he should have been both grateful his mother was in a safe and loving home, and thankful that he was relieved of the burden of caring for an aging, ailing parent. Stanley and Emilie remained on the farm in Mount Vernon, so it’s not as though his mother left him destitute, but perhaps he was upset that a substantial chunk of his future inheritance was given directly to his daughter.
Annie spent the remaining three years of her life with Edith, Norman, and their daughter, Jeanette. She passed away in 1940 after breaking her hip and contracting pneumonia. Jeanette was too young to remember much about her great-grandmother Annie, but she recalled her being a quiet woman. It is believed that Annie made the quilt square in the late 1930s while she was living with Edith and her family. Some of the fabric used was likely much older than that. I can almost picture her, a wizened, little old woman, sorting through scraps of fabric, joining them together with ornate stitches while she chatted with Edith, watched little Jeanette play, and allowed her mind to wander back to days on the Mount Vernon farm when she was a lovely young bride with her whole future ahead of her.
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