Share your Story
Every story adds another thread.
At book signings, school visits, community gatherings, and speaking events, people often tell me about a bedspread tucked inside a cedar chest, a mother or grandmother who tufted for extra money, a family member who worked in a mill, or a memory of growing up along Peacock Alley.
These stories are valuable. They are part of our shared history, and they deserve more than a hurried conversation before everyone heads home.
This page gives them a place to be recorded, remembered, and preserved.
The History Families Carry
Catherine Evans Whitener's first tufted bedspread sparked a story much larger than her own. That story belongs to the many hands, homes, roads, mills, porches, shops, and families that shaped Northwest Georgia's bedspread, chenille, textile, and carpet history.
Official records can tell us what happened and when. Family stories help us understand what it felt like to live it.
One person may remember tufting on the front porch. Another may have a photograph with no names written on the back. Someone else may remember riding past bedspreads displayed along the highway, working in a mill, selling chenille, sewing labels, delivering goods, or watching an industry transform a community.
No single memory tells the whole story. Together, they help paint a fuller picture.
What Kind of Story Can I Share?
Does your family have a story, document, memory, or connection related to Catherine Evans Whitener or early handtufting?
A Catherine Evans Whitener Connection
Do you have a handmade or chenille bedspread that belonged to a parent, grandparent, aunt, neighbor, or friend?
A Family Bedspread
A Maker’s Memory
Did someone in your family tuft, sew, wash, trim, finish, design, sell, or deliver bedspreads?
A Dalton Connection
Did your family work in Dalton’s bedspread, chenille, carpet, textile, or mill industries?
Do you remember when Highway 41 was lined with bedspreads fluttering in the wind, catching the eye of travelers passing by?
A Peacock Alley Story
Do you have old photographs, advertisements, labels, tools, patterns, or family objects connected to tufting or chenille?
A Photograph or Heirloom
Do you remember sleeping under a chenille spread, visiting a grandmother’s house, or being told not to pick at the tufts?
A Childhood Memory
Was your family connected to a bedspread shop, mill, roadside business, carpet company, or textile operation?
A Business or Mill Story
Every Story Matters
History is not held only in museums, archives, and textbooks. It also lives in family stories, handwritten notes, faded photographs, familiar objects, and memories passed from one generation to the next.
Your story may confirm something already known, add a missing detail, preserve a name, introduce an overlooked perspective, or lead to a story no one knew to look for.
However large or small it may seem, your story matters.
Let's keep following the thread: one memory, one family, and one story at a time.
Before You Submit
This form is intended for adults age 18 or older. A parent or legal guardian should submit on behalf of a child.
Please share only stories, photographs, and other materials that you have permission to submit. Do not send irreplaceable original items. Clear digital photographs or scans are best for initial review.
I may not be able to respond personally to every submission, but each one will be received with appreciation and care.
SHARE YOUR STORY
Follow the thread back in time...
You do not need to know every name, place, or date. Tell the story as you remember it. Digital photographs and scans are welcome, and small details can sometimes provide important historical clues. The goal is preservation and connection, not perfection.
Your story will only be shared with your permission. Questions? Write to hillbetty@readrachel.com.