Four-block squares alternate with squares of whole white print. Four blocks composed of two red squares of a red print and two squares of a white print. Perhaps ten different red prints are used alternately. All framed by three narrow borders using a red print for two and a blue print for the middle one.
Quilted shell patterns are used throughout along with a rope pattern at border, all stitched in an uneven hand. Roberta would likely have been around 65 years of age when the quilt was made.
Both the Penrose and the Carrigan families were Quaker and attended the Drumore Meeting (12 mi. south of Liberty Square). However, Enos Carrigan converted to Presbyterian, and after Roberta Penrose married him, they attended the Chestnut Level Presbyterian Church. Enos Carrigan was a farmer (did not follow blacksmith trade of his father) who also helped found and was one of the directors of the Farmers National Bank in Quarryville as well as the director of the Southern Mutual Insurance Co. also in Quarryville. In addition, he was Drumore Twp. school director at time of his death. Enos & Roberta are both buried in the Drumore Friends Meeting House cemetery.
Provenance
Donor believes the Penrose & Carrigan families were Scots-Irish, as were so many of the early settlers of Drumore Twp. She & her genealogist cousin are unaware of any Welsh ancestors. Ellis & Evans states (p. 969) that the Penroses emigrated from Bucks to Lancaster Co. in 1827.
Donor recalls as a little girl seeing her grandmother Roberta and her unmarried sister Sarah Jane (who was then in a wheelchair & living with Enos Carrigan family) both setting up the quilting frame in the living room during the winter months. It was likely during these years that this quilt was made.
