By Carol Hubbell Boggs

In September 2005, I retrieved a message from the answering machine that was to lead me to a Hubbell connection far away in Indiana. The caller, Linda Browner, lived in nearby Carrboro, NC, but didn’t know me, but when she decided to try once more to find the origin of a friendship quilt she had purchased in the 1970s, she mentioned some of the names on the quilt to a friend of hers. He happened to be a member of the Durham-Orange Genealogical Society, and directed her to me to learn about Carrie Hubbell, whose name was prominent on the quilt. Her phone call was particularly intriguing, because of my interest in the Hubbell Wives, so I went to the computer to locate Carrie through census records in Lewis Township, Clay County, Indiana. It did not take long to find nearly all the women whose names were on the quilt, and I contacted Hilbert Hubble to ask which of our Hubbell men was likely to be Carrie’s husband. He said he thought he was A&R 9605, Roy L. Hubbell, an Indiana coal miner.

Linda was astonished at my success, and explained she had purchased the quilt in an antique shop in Kentucky while on a camping trip there, and was taken by the charm of it and the fact that it contained a piece of history. In the center one of the blocks contained the words, “Community Flower Club September 21 1933”. The antique store owner told her she thought it was probably a local quilt, or might have been from nearby Ohio, so for years Linda had tried off and on to locate possible quilters in Ohio without success. In 2005 she decided it was time to finally place the quilt in the hands of the descendants of the stitchers. She had asked various people about several of the names on the quilt, and one had even used the Internet to try to locate the stitchers, but Linda had not mentioned the name Hubbell and so had no luck.

Now that she had a location she called the Clay County (Indiana) Genealogical Society and explained her quest to the volunteer working there that day who was Lila Stienstra, the grand-daughter of two of the stitchers, and great-grand-daughter of a third. She immediately said she knew of the quilt and the women whose names it bore. She said, “Gramma let me go to some of their meetings. They would have a short meeting, then quilt for a couple hours, then have refreshments. They met at each others homes.” She was very touched and happy to hear of the quilt’s survival.

Lila said she had known of a contemporary Iva Hubbell [possibly wife of 12066 Ray Hubbell, ed.], but most of the families mentioned were no longer in the region. Soon she will have the familiar quilt in her hands, all because Carrie Hubbell signed her name, never suspecting how important it would become in the search for the home of a special Depression quilt.

Please visit the Clay County Genealogical Society online at http://www.ccgsilib.org/