Lake Minnetonka Chapter members were honored last spring when their design was selected to represent Minnesota on the America 250! quilt. The group recently completed the quilt block, which is pictured below. The NSDAR American Heritage Committee will join blocks constructed by the 53 state and overseas chapters, and the finished quilt will hang at headquarters and occasionally travel to various celebrations.
Contest criteria specified the block should tell the history of the state and what was happening during the Revolutionary War. Charlotte Jenkins researched the state’s early history and made a surprising discovery. Part of the land later called Minnesota, pictured in blue fabric on the quilt block, came to the United States with the 1783 Treaty of Paris when Great Britain ceded this territory to the U.S. In 1858, the areas shown in blue and gold fabrics converged to become the state of Minnesota.
The design also pictures Minnesota’s unique state bird (common loon) and state grain (wild rice). Karen Wojahn artfully completed the embroidery. The following narrative will accompany the quilt block as it’s submitted:
America 250! Quilt Block
Designed and created by Lake Minnetonka Chapter Members:
Charlotte Jenkins, Karen Wojahn, Christine Stephansen & Gigi Hickey
MINNESOTA: LAND OF 10,000 LAKES
History and Map
The history of Minnesota’s state boundary lines dates back to the 1783 Treaty of Paris. Great Britain agreed to a United States-Canada boundary line from the Atlantic Ocean to the Mississippi River. The line was to run to the northwesternmost point of Lake of the Woods, then due west to the Mississippi River. Unknowingly, the negotiators had agreed to a geographic impossibility. The source of the Mississippi was later proved to be far south of Lake of the Woods but in the meantime, an “imaginary” Mississippi River set the boundary, as shown on our quilt block. The land shown in blue fabric, relinquished by Britain in 1783, initially became part of Wisconsin Territory.
During the Convention of 1818, the U.S. and Great Britain agreed to accept a due northsouth boundary line from the northwesternmost point of Lake of the Woods to the forty-ninth parallel, thus creating the Northwest Angle.
Minnesota Territory was created in 1849 from land remaining after Wisconsin and Iowa became states and encompassed all of Minnesota and parts of North and South Dakota.
On May 11, 1858, the eastern half of Minnesota Territory became a state. The western boundary, separating Minnesota from Dakota Territory, had been defined by Henry Mower Rice, U.S. Senator from Minnesota, 1858-1863. Rice was the grandson of American Revolution Patriot, Jedediah Rice (Ancestor #: A094945).
The Common Loon
The Common Loon is the state bird of Minnesota and of Minnesota only. Approximately 12,000 common loons make the northern lakes of Minnesota their summer home. Only Alaska has a larger population of common loon.
Wild Rice
Wild Rice is the state grain of Minnesota. Wild Rice, an aquatic grass and not related to rice at all, grows naturally in the shallow lakes of northern and central Minnesota. An important food source and nesting source for waterfowl, it has been a food staple for Native Americans for centuries. Minnesota grows over 80% of the world’s wild rice.
