The Tenney Quilt
Celebrating the Women of Minnesota’s Tiniest Town

"Today we are in the midst of an explosion of interest in women’s history, and historians, traditionally attracted to the written word as a way of understanding the past, are increasingly recognizing the need to turn to other sources as well, since women, who were often denied education and discouraged from writing, left fewer records than men. One source, and a paramount one, is their quilts. For if comparatively few women wrote, practically all of them sewed, and in their quilts, especially, they found a capacious medium for expression. For vast numbers of women, their needles became their pens, and quilts their eminently expressive texts. "

--HEARTS AND HANDS, Ferrero, Hedges and Silber

At the turn of the century, in a small railroad town built in the agricultural boom of the Red River Valley, the women of Tenney, Minnesota had their own stories to tell. In The Tenney Quilt, Haagenson gives voice to women whose only means of chronicling their lives and histories were a needle and thread.

The Tenney Quilt is a tender and enlightening rendering of small-town life for the Midwestern woman in 1928. 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 the 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 such as 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 whether the reader is familiar with Tenney or not: a snapshot of the smallest Minnesota town, illustrating both where we have come from and how far we
have come.