Shenandoah Valley history written in textiles: Quilt exhibit offers insight

Little in the recorded history of Augusta County is as intimate and revealing as are the handmade quilts so carefully created by Valley women a century or more ago.  On February 5, the Augusta County Historical Society (ACHS) opened a very telling and colorful exhibit at the R. R. Smith Center of beautiful, handmade quilts preserved by the local Yount family.

The exhibit, entitled “Four Generations of Yount Family Quilts – 1830-1985” will be on display from February 5 until April 30 at the Smith Center at 20 South New Street in Staunton. The documented quilts on exhibit are drawn from a collection of about 60 quilts, coverlets and pillows created by the women in the family of J. B. Yount III of Waynesboro.  Yount is a charter member and past president of the ACHS, and former mayor of Waynesboro.

The quilt exhibit is curated by historic quilt expert Paula Rau. Rau will also give a talk on the local and historical importance of the collection 7 p.m. March 5 in the Smith Center Lecture Room.

An opening reception for the exhibit will be held 4 to 6 p.m. Thursday, February 5, at the Smith Center.

The Yount quilts were documented in an ACHS project last summer.  The collection provides a glimpse into the domestic life of a rural family that settled in the central Shenandoah Valley in the eighteenth century. Quite literally, these quilts are a fascinating “textile history book” for life in the Shenandoah Valley.  The ACHS project produced a 400 page document describing patterns, size, materials, stories and photographs.  That document is now available in the ACHS library.

Rau is a Texas native who moved to the Augusta County area almost 40 years ago.  She served as executive director of the Staunton/Augusta Art Center in the 1980s, then left to get her Masters in Museum Studies from the University of Oklahoma, where her thesis was “Quilts and Women’s Lives.”  She later obtained a doctorate in Art History from Virginia Commonwealth University and has taught art history at Piedmont Community College, Mary Baldwin College and Bridgewater College.

The ACHS was founded in 1964 to study, collect, preserve, publish, educate about, and promote the history of Augusta County and its communities. The society marked its 50th year in 2014.  More information is available online at www.augustacountyhs.org.