December 3, 2025
Introduction: In this article, Melissa Davenport Berry writes about a “Friendship Quilt” from the 1850s with many Mayflower connections. Melissa is a genealogist who has a website, americana-archives.com, and a Facebook group, New England Family Genealogy and History.
In October of 2003 the Dennis Historical Society (DHS) was gifted a “Friendship Quilt,” currently on exhibit at one of their sites, the 1736 Josiah Dennis Manse Museum, home of the first settled minister of the town of Dennis, Massachusetts.
The DHS brought in an appraiser who classified the quilt as a “snowball design” and determined that the squares were done in the 1850s. There is a handwritten name in India ink on the white chintz circles in the center of each square.
The names are very faded, but a list was preserved by the maker and appears in the 2003 DHS newsletter announcing the gift. Most of the names are kin by blood or marriage, and descendants of Mayflower passengers.
The donor of the quilt was Elizabeth “Betty” Parker, daughter of Roscoe Manson and Ann Louise Guillow. She is the wife of Capt. Henry Parker, son of Rev. Edward Melville and Isabella (Goodrich) Parker, and a direct descendant of Mayflower passengers William Brewster and his wife Mary through their son Jonathan Brewster, who married Lucretia Oldham.
Betty’s great grandmother, Olive Bangs (Crowell) Perkins (1830-1918), the 2nd wife of William Kimball Perkins, worked on the quilt. She is the daughter of Issac and Olive (Bangs) Crowell.
The quilt was passed down to Olive’s daughter Susan “Susie” Olivia (Perkins) Guillow, wife of Nicola Manson Guillow, who then left it to the donor’s mother.
Below is a matrimony notice for Susie and Nicola, who were married in Wakefield, Massachusetts, on 17 October 1888, by Rev. Roland D. Grant.
The quilt maker’s mother is Olive (Bangs) Crowell (1794-1834), daughter of Silvanus and Mehitable (Mayo) Bangs, and a direct descendant of Mayflower passengers John Howland, Elizabeth Tilley, Stephen Hopkins, William Brewster and his wife Mary.
In 1823 Olive married Issac Crowell (1791-1847), son of John and Hannah (Kelley) Crowell, and a direct descendant of Mayflower passenger Thomas Rogers.
Below is a death notice for Olive.
I have researched the names on the quilt, and the first two I worked on appear below in bold.
Mrs. Judah H. Sears, born Priscilla Hall Howes (1805-1892) to Jabez and Hulda (Crowell) Howes, and a direct descendant of Mayflower passengers Edward Winslow, John Howland and his wife Elizabeth (Tilley) Howland, through their daughter Hope Howland, who married John Chipman. She also descends from passengers William White and his wife Susanna (Jackson) White through their son Peregrine White, who was born on the ship, and his wife Sarah (Bassett) White.
Susanna and William White brought this cradle from Holland; she was pregnant with their second son, Peregrine, when they left England for the New World.
Additionally, Priscilla descends from Augustine (Austin) Bearse and Thomas Bourne.
Priscilla is the wife of Judah Sears Jr. (1804-1878), son of Capt. Judah Sears and his wife Sally (Hall) Sears, a direct descendant of Mayflower passengers William Brewster and his wife Mary through their daughter Patience Brewster, who married Gov. Thomas Prence.
Judah’s grandfather Edmund Sears served as a soldier in Lieut. Micajah Sears’ company, mobilizing against the British in response to the alarm at Dartmouth and Falmouth on 6 September 1778.
Edmund Sears ran a Boston packet ship called Betsy. Two of his sons, Judah Sr. (married Sally Hall) and Jacob (married Elizabeth “Betsey” Foster) ran a packet schooner called Sally & Betsey, named for their two wives.
Judah Jr., whose name is on the friendship quilt, was a master builder. His construction company was called Judah Sears & Son.
Below is an example of their work, shown in this color lithograph, circa 1869, of the Boston Coliseum built for the National Peace Jubilee, commemorating the end of the Civil War.
On the right-hand bottom of this lithograph, you can see Judah’s business logo.
This newspaper advertisement mentions both the Coliseum and the colored lithograph.
Below is an obituary for Judah Sears Jr.
This article reads:
Judah Sears, the well known builder, died Sept. 16, at 8 A. M., born at Dennis, Cape Cod, Nov. 17, 1804, moved to South Boston, August, 1835, in lineal descent of Richard Sears, the pilgrim, who landed at Plymouth, May 8, 1630. His distressing complaint, asthma, from which he suffered for 50 years, compelled him to retire from active business in 1876, but he will be remembered by his associates as a man of large stature and muscular, with a mind fitted for the body it inhabited, and reckless of danger, of which many incidents can be related.
A Christian man, he was one of six to organize a society of Methodists in South Boston. Those that have heard the story of their early struggles (he being the last), will know how much he loved by what he gave. Also, by striving to perfect himself a better manhood, living to carry higher and higher in himself the moral sentiments, conscience, benevolence, faith, hope, and charity. All knowing him can truly say he has had died venerable for character and years.
More of Judah’s family names that appear on the freedom quilt will be in my next article, but here is one famous descendant who sprang from these lines: a great grandson of Judah Jr., Zenas “Daddy” Sears (1913-1988), son of Charles Maxwell Sears Sr. and his wife Harriet Louise (Decker) Sears.
Zenas was an announcer, disc jockey, and on-air personality with radio stations WATL, WQXI, and WGST in Atlanta, a noted Georgia Music Hall of Fame member who introduced black music to Atlanta radio in the late 1940s and 1950s.
To be continued…
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Note on the header image: “Mayflower in Plymouth Harbor,” by William Halsall, 1882. Credit: Wikimedia Commons.