This blanket was handcrafted, probably sometime in the 1920s, by Laura Moran Booker in Dickson, Tennessee. Laura immigrated to the United States from Galway, Ireland when she was in her late teens. She fell in love with a ranger who subsequently went off to Texas and was killed. Laura then married a local sharecropper named George Booker. George was the son of a wealthy landowner, James Eabon and his worker (slave?) Lavisy Booker. They both paid a $250 fine for having a child out of wedlock.
Laura and George had a rough life. They had 3 children, Paul, Wilson and Gladys. Gladys’ clothes went into making this quilt. She was quite stylish for the day. She ended up getting pregnant and sent up to Detroit to have the baby (my mother). She contracted TB and died 4 years later. Laura Booker then raised the baby.