The Creation of our Signature Quilt

After much research, we are confident that we have now established how and by whom our Signature Quilt was created.

We are calling it a signature quilt and not an autograph quilt. Many other organisations also created these types of quilts during the war and called them ‘autograph’ quilts.



However, many of the names on our quilt were provided by other family members and are not the actual ‘autographs’ of those featured on the quilt.

Many names are of soldiers who were fighting overseas and who subsequently died, and their families wanted to honour their memories by including their names on the quilt.

The ANZAC Club

We had originally been led to believe that the quilt had been made by a local group formed to raise funds to send ‘comfort parcels’ back to the serving men and women at the front – The ANZAC Club. The ANZAC Club was established by some of the women of Williamstown, Newport and Spotswood, who met at a Mrs Musther’s house on 3 February, 1916, with the idea originating from letters received from some the men at the front. 

A subsequent meeting was held at the Williamstown Temperance Hall on Wednesday 9 February, 1916 at 3 pm. At this first official meeting, the office bearers were elected with the Mayoress, Miss Byrne, taking on the position as President, Vice-President Mrs George Smith; Honourable Secretary Mrs Musther; Honourable Treasurer Miss Simpson and Enrolling Secretary Mrs Bradshaw.

However, after looking through the list of office bearers of the ANZAC Club, we couldn’t find any of the women holding committee positions listed on our quilt which we thought was odd. So, we started looking through Trove once again.

The Allies’ Stall

We then found reference to another local group created by local church groups called the Allies’ Stall. They had decided to create a quilt to also raise funds for the war effort and had charged sixpence for anyone wanting to add their name to their quilt. Created by Mrs Hall of Chandler Street, the aim was that their quilt would be donated to the Williamstown Hospital at the end of the war.

However, after further research, we found a description of this quilt in the Williamstown Chronicle of 2 November, 1918 stating that it featured “19 large and 14 small crosses in red … wrought in white thread the names of leading townspeople”, which did not match our quilt, so this ruled this organisation out as the makers of our quilt. 

The 14th Battalion Comforts Fund

So, we then had to start again, and went back to the drawing board. Given that we knew that Captain Stewart Murray Hansen had definitely supplied the signatures of some of the men and women he served with or met overseas, and that it had been his mother, Mrs Agnes Hansen’s idea for Stewart to collect the signatures, we starting trawling through Trove again. 

We then found that Mrs Hansen had been a committee member of another group called The 14th Battalion Comforts Fund, established to raise funds in support of the servicemen that were part of the 14th Battalion.

This fundraising group had been established in September, 1916 with the authority of the Defence Department. Miss Dare, the sister of Lieutenant-Colonel C.M.M. Dare, D.S.O., the commanding officer of the 14th Battalion, called a meeting of the mothers, wives and friends of the battalion and a committee was established.

The Committee running the fund were featured in Punch, Melbourne in August, 1917 listing all of their names and their photos.

When we checked the names of the members of this committee against the names on the quilt, we found many of the names matched!

So, although there is no paperwork to support this conclusion, or reference in any of the papers of the time mentioning that these women created the quilt, we are now certain that Agnes Hansen and members of this fundraising group created the quilt as a way to raise funds for their cause.

For example, the below square features the signature of Capt. Clive Connelly on it and Mrs Clive Connelly was the Honorary Secretary for the Comforts Fund.

The idea for the quilt was to use square offcuts of calico and to ask anyone who was interested, to sign their name on one of the squares and to pay sixpence to do so. As each square was filled with signatures the ladies would then stitch the signature onto the calico with red cotton thread and then bind the edges in red before assembling all the squares together as a quilt.

However, on reflection, the ladies decided to make their quilt “different” to many of the other autograph quilts being made by other organisations. Mrs Agnes Hansen, mother of Captain Stewart Murray Hansen who was overseas fighting, came up with the idea of asking her son Stewart to collect the signatures of other service men and women he met and then to post them home to be included on the quilt. Captain Hansen duly collected signatures from many of the men from his 14th Battalion, as well as nurses, doctors, mechanics, drivers, clerics and many members of other battalions. When the squares arrived back in Melbourne, they were carefully embroidery by his mother and her friends.

We can only surmise that as Mrs Hansen was so involved with the creation of the quilt given her son, Stewart Murray Hansen had obtained many of the signatures featured on the quilt, the women who had contributed to its creation felt it should remain with Mrs Hansen. 

We have no actual records in our archives of how the quilt ended up with Miss Win Stewart, but as she was the niece of Mrs Agnes Hansen, we can only assume it had remained in the Hansen family after the war. She eventually donated it to the Williamstown Historical Society in 1971 as she was a long-standing member and committee member of the Williamstown Historical Society.

In 1995 the quilt was sent to the Victorian Centre for the Conservation of Cultural Material where it was vacuumed to remove any surface dirt and dust. It was then washed by hand, rinsed five times and then dried flat. Once the cleaning process had finished, the quilt was backed by a cheesecloth fabric attached by Velcro. The VCCCM also recommended that the quilt be kept out of direct sunlight and lights turned off when not on view. In 2015 the quilt was framed with timber and Perspex for the exhibition Follow the Flag; Australian Artists and War 1914-45, held at the National Gallery of Victoria to mark the centenary of the landing at Gallipoli.

One of our volunteers, Pat Klemm, has painstakingly recorded all of the names embroidered on the quilt into a searchable spreadsheet. Deciphering all of the names must have been a mammoth job and without her untiring efforts, trying to find the actual people represented on the quilt would have been impossible. Additional research is currently underway to establish the various theatres of war the soldiers on the quilt fought in and if they survived. Many of the men whose signatures are on the quilt didn’t. At least 40 of the soldiers we have identified were either killed in action or died of their wounds at a later date.

Our Quilt is one of the Historical Society’s prized possessions and is now over 100 years old. It has been exhibited in several outside galleries over the years, mostly because of its uniqueness in containing signatures of serving personnel, not just of the signatures of the contributing local donors.

References:

Trove Newspapers

Williamstown Chronicle

Punch, Melbourne

MRS AGNES HANSEN AND FRIENDS (attributed to)

Williamstown, Victoria, Australia 

WW1 Patchwork Signature Quilt 1916-18

cotton, linen, cotton and silk thread

220.0 x 169.0 cm irreg.

Presented by Miss Win Stewart, 1971

Williamstown Historical Society, Williamstown (Acc No. 85)