The quilt caught the discerning eyes of collectors and dealers Kate and Joel Kopp, who purchased it at the 1991 Sotheby's auction and exhibited it in their New York City antiques showroom, America Hurrah. Before then, the maker was unidentified. It was not until the quilt's sale and subsequent publicity that a Westchester County, New York, resident, Irene Preston Miller, recognized it, and its intriguing story began to unfold. When Mrs. Miller noticed a photograph of the quilt in a local newspaper article, she contacted Sotheby's to let them know she had information about the quilt's provenance. The auction house staff put her in contact with the Kopps, and she informed them that the quilt they recently purchased was the same one she had included as an illustration in a book she co-authored in 1965, and that its maker's name was Lucinda Honstain.2 By the time the Kopps decided to sell the quilt to the Robert and Ardis James Foundation, in 1998, it had appeared in a number of publications as The Reconciliation QuiIt.3 It was so called because of a block near the top of the quilt(B3) depicting the release of Confederate president Jefferson Davis from prison, an act regarded in the North as extraordinarily magnanimous. The quilt became widely known and appreciated by American folk art dealers, collectors, and scholars as a quintessential example of American folk art. Yet its origins remained largely uninvestigated, and its imagery almost entirely unexamined and unexplained. Collectors Robert and Ardis James hoped that that would change when they awarded Melissa Jurgena, a student in the University of NebraskaLincoln's graduate program in textile history, a fellowship to research the quilt during the fall of 2001. They believed the research would shed light on the origins and meaning of this important piece of American art. Beginning with the information that Irene Miller had compiled, Jurgena began researching the life history of the quilt's maker, and to investigate the possible motivations and meanings behind its powerful images. The Jameses then decided to donate the Reconciliation Quilt to the International Quilt Study Center (IQSC) at
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the University of Nebraska-Lincoln. The IQSC, an academic center whose faculty and staff are at the forefront of scholarship pertaining to antique quilts and quiltmaking practices, seemed the perfect place for one of the Jameses' most important acquisitions ever. Below is the story of Lucinda Ward Honstain's life as it emerged from Jurgena's research, told in collabora-
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Westchester County area for many years, and her paternal grandfather fought in the Revolutionary War.5 Like many younger sons who did not inherit family lands, Thomas Ward moved his family to the city in search of opportunities and a better life. Lucinda Ward was between five and six years of age when her family moved to the area of New York
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Photograph courtesy the International Quilt Study Center, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
tion with the IQSC director, Patricia Cox Crews. The maker of this unique quilt, Lucinda(Ward)Honstain, was born in Ossining, Westchester County, New York, on July 24, 1820, to Thomas and Phoebe (Edsell) Ward.4 Her father's family had lived in the
City now known as Lower Manhattan.6 Her father became involved in the dry goods business and eventually owned his own company, working with different partners in the Manhattan and Brooklyn areas for more than twenty years.7 One of his sons, also named Thomas, carried on the family
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