The Tenney Quilt: Celebrating the Women of Minnesota's Tiniest Town

The Tenney Quilt is a tender and enlightening rendering of small-town life of the 1928 Midwestern woman. Haagenson pieces together this deeply personal account of the men and women of Tenney around an heirloom quilt with a history of its own. In 1928, Tenney's Town Hall sought funds for a cook stove in order to accommodate the social events and gathering of the town's residents. Several women initiated a project to raise the money: a signature quilt would be made, ten cents collected for each signature and piece of quilt added to the whole. What ensued was a gathering together of 530 people, their lives, their values, and a preservation of these documented in a hand-crafted chronicle of Tenney history. Haagenson uses the quilt to highlight the disparate lives of German, Scottish, and Norwegian immigrants working as school teachers, storekeepers, homemakers, nurses, factory workers, and seamstresses and how they come together to share their time and talents for their community. Chapter by chapter, thoughtful commentary on the limitations placed on these women due to time and place is interspersed between accounts of the women's honest and willful commitment to their families and each other. Schoolyard reminiscings, familiar rituals of church socials, and exciting historical "firsts" offer light to the hardships of daily life in home and vocation. The Tenney Quilt is a warm and engaging read, a snapshot of the smallest Minnesota town illustrating both where we have come from and how far we have come.