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Nellie Bolen bought this jacquard cotton coverlet at an auction or garage sale and gave it to her friend since  childhood, Addie Meily Gimbel.   Addie Meily was in fact directly related to its weaver through her grandfather, John Kerk Meily.  The coverlet is about the size of a small bedspread  and  it is faded in one spot but is otherwise in decent shape considering its' age.

The part that shows the weaver's name, place, and date of weaving is called the corner block.  This Samuel Meily is considered Samuel Meily, Sr. by the people who study these weavings.  This is because he is believed to be the father of the Samuel Meily whose weavings were made in Illinois.  Samuel Meily, Sr. lived in Richland County from the early 1830s until he moved west  to Illinois and then to Kansas City, probably in the 1850s.  There were several Meily's making these weavings in Ohio, most originally from Lebanon PA and related to one another.  They seemed to keep moving westward, ahead of the machines that made the machine-woven textiles  that would make these particular weavings obsolete by the time the Civil War commenced.

Many of the coverlets (or coverlids) were done with more colors than this one, and there were many different patterns for the borders and the interior, which is called the centerfield.  This particular coverlet could probably be placed  as coming from Ohio by a weaving expert who  had studied the patterns extensively, even without the corner block to identify it more specifically to Richland County.  Its' centerfield pattern is considered a four-leaf pattern.

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click on any of the three photographs for a larger view

The middle photo, and the photo on the right were submitted by Sally, who was granted permission by the owner who is also working to discover the unique history of these textiles. 

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