A road travelled Meet the people who lived and still live along the roads that lead to Collina My grandmother spent many of her evening hours sewing quilt blocks. She called this piecing quilts. As soon as my brother wore out a shirt or I outgrew a dress, it was recycled into these quilt blocks. Mind you, the word recycled was not around in those years.
Once this task was completed, Gram would set up her wooden quilt frames in the bedroom over the kitchen. The quilt top, batting and backing were sewn with string into these frames. She then began the serious work of drawing lines with a yard stick and tracing around cardboard cutouts. Next came hours of stitching along these penciled patterns.
Her quilts were of many designs: log cabin, star of the east, patchwork, and my favourite, the Dresden plate. As I sat and watched Gram quilting the Dresden plate pattern, I would visualize a maze of roads all starting at a central spot on each block, and fanning out in all directions to meet with more roads at the next village on another quilt block.
Still today, when I look at old maps, I think of Gram's quilts.
Sherrill Chown has taken the roads leading to Collina in Kings County and written about the families who lived on them in the days of yesteryear and today. She compiled her discoveries in the book, "Facial Expressions of Home."
Reading "Facial Expressions of Home," you can travel along the Gibbon Mountain, Pearsonville, Collina, Watson, Upper Springfield, Snider, Lester and the New Road and visit with the families that called this area home.
This book of 288 pages is generously enhanced with many photographs of the residents. Reference copies of "Facial Expressions of Home" are at the Kings County Museum in Hampton and at the Sussex Library and other research institutions.
Sherrill has gathered much information on the families of the Collina area.
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Copy available from rmcusack@nbnet.nb.ca
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Queries have been grouped together to cover the year 1998 and can be viewed at Queries-1998
Ruby Cusack is a genealogy buff living in Saint John, New Brunswick, Canada. Readers are invited to send their New Brunswick genealogical queries to Ruby at rmcusack@nbnet.nb.ca. When E-Mailing please put Yesteryear Families in the Subject line. Please include in the query, your name and postal address as someone reading the newspaper, may have information to share with you but not have access to E-mail. Queries should be no more than 45 words in length.
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