Thank you again, Maddys52. Definitely landed gentry, then. i find that with these researches I can never find the quilt mentioned in any docs, even in wills. But what I do find is the community from which the quilt emerged, perhaps shopkeepers, including drapers, or people with skills like dressmakers and tailors. In this case, i think we have a fairly affluent community where women had time to sew, probably because some one else was doing the cooking and cleaning! So, I will try to identify the women who would have been around the Parkinson/Madder/Reeves family around 1800. Other economic information is important, too, because it tells me the lifestyle.
