Images(5)

Album Book of Mary E. Crane

Date1847

Maker Mary E. Crane

OriginAmerica, Ohio, Cincinnati

MediumLeather, paper, watercolor, ink

DimensionsOH: 9" x OW: 7"

Credit LineMuseum Purchase

Object number2005-16,5

DescriptionThis is a red leather-bound memory book. Inside are watercolor paintings (many of various flower arrangements), hand-written poems, and prints, brochures, and other bits of paper ephemera pasted on or placed in between pages. The front cover is embossed with gold, with sinuous floral designs in all four corners and a floral arrangement with a lyre in the middle. Above the lyre is the owner's name, "MARY E. CRANE."
Label TextCollecting small drawings, watercolors, mottos, and autographs in paper album books was a popular pastime in the 1830s and 1840s for young women. As in this album book, many often contained sentiments of friendship and remembrance. The book, along with family Bibles, unfinished needlework projects, two samplers, and a signed Cincinnati, Ohio, sampler dating 1820 descended in the Folger-Crane family.
MarkingsNone
ProvenanceThis memory book marked "MARY E. CRANE" is part of a group of samplers and books that descended in the Folger-Crane family of Cincinnati, Ohio. The memory book owner was Mary Eliza Crane (b. March 29, 1830) in Wayne County, Indiana. She was the eldest child of Rufus Crane and Sarah Folger (b. July 11, 1808; d. 1871), the seventh child of Tristram (b. 1772; d. Oct. 15, 1815) and Mary Folger (b. 1773; d. 1823). No further information beyond her birth place and date is known about her. The Folger family, originally from Nantucket, Massachusetts, was in Ohio by 1814. Members of the Society of Friends, they are first listed in Hinshaw's ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AMERICAN QUAKER GENEALOGY, Vol. V, as transferring to the Miami Monthly Meeting in Warren County, then on to Cincinnati, where they were listed among the founding families of the Cincinnati Monthly Meeting (set apart from Miami MM on March 23, 1814).

The samplers, family bibles, and books probably descended through Sarah's daughters.