A midnight glance at February’s cold Snow Moon high in the sky unleashed thoughts of an old family treasure, held by five generations of female heirs from my Sunderland/South Deerfield ancestry before vanishing in the Wild West.

Thoughts of the relic entered my consciousness due to recent email correspondence about it and related topics with an old Greenfield Recorder colleague now residing near Lawrence, Kansas, where some of my peripheral genealogical tendrils lead.

I don’t expect ever to see or touch this once-worshipped family relic, which Sunderland historian John Montague Smith describes as a “bed blanket” in a genealogical footnote on Page 549 of his 1899 History of the Town of Sunderland, Massachusetts (1673-1899), Which Originally Embraced Within Its Limits the Present Towns of Montague and Leverett.

What follows may get confusing. I’ll give it my best shot.

Smith says the homespun blanket came to my family with Mary Maghill, a colonial dame of unknown parentage who in 1736 married the Deerfield-born Fort Dummer soldier Joseph Alexander (1705-1761). They settled and eventually died in Hadley. From Maghill/Alexander, he said, it descended through four consecutive daughters named Mary, ending with the twice-married Mary (Augusta Arms Eldridge) Torbert (1826-1913) – a so-called “Free-Stater” or “Free-Soiler,” who moved to Bloody Kansas in 1856 and was widowed two years later.

Sharing her mother’s first name, this Mary – the younger sister of Eliza Arms Woodruff (1824-1898), my great-great-grandmother – went by Augusta, and was responsible for removing the blanket from a community where it was meaningful. At some point just before, or more likely after, her mother’s Christmas 1887 passing in South Deerfield, it went to the aforementioned Lawrence, where its faraway importance diminished and it has since vanished.

Typewritten family records from the late 19th and early 20th centuries and today in my possession mirror Smith regarding the blanket’s Mary Maghill Alexander genesis, but then my records take the provenance a step further. I’m guessing my unnamed source was Eliza, with important 20th-century additions and corrections by her daughter Fannie Woodruff Sanderson (1865-1947), my great-grandmother.

Between the first and last blanket heirs – Mary Maghill/Alexander and Mary Augusta Arms Eldridge/Torbert – Smith names the heirs as Mary Alexander Smith, who married David Smith of Montague; Mary Smith Graham, who married tanner and shoemaker Benjamin Graham of Sunderland; and Mary Graham Arms, who married South Deerfield shoemaker Erastus Arms.

The blanket first tickled my curiosity nearly 40 years ago, soon after the passing of my 93-year-old spinster great-aunt Gladys Hayes Sanderson (1895-1989). Known to my immediate family as “Antie,” she was Fannie’s daughter and our unofficial family historian, and steward of records and photographs. “Antie” and I lived under the same roof twice: first when I was a boy, and again after I bought the South Deerfield home to which she was born and granted life-estate.

The blanket first crossed my path in the History of Sunderland. I then chased down confirmation along with some crucial additional information in the private records squirreled away by “Antie” in an old, black, trifold, plastic insurance packet. A comparison of the two sources revealed one troubling inconsistency involving the identity of Augusta Eldridge’s second husband. His given name was Dr. John B. (a/k/a J.B.) Torbert, a Humboldt, Kansas physician who tied the knot in 1871 and died 14 years later, leaving Augusta widowed for a second time.

We can excuse Smith’s History for incorrectly reporting her new married name as “Talbot.” My private records originally shared the mistake before it was crossed out and corrected to “Torbert” in permanent black ink. I have also found his last name inaccurately spelled “Tolbert.” Online today, however, it is easy to verify that the right name was Dr. J.B. Torbert.

Though still anyone’s guess, our blanket probably resided in South Deerfield for the duration of Mary Arms’s (1794-1887) long life. Some readers may remember that I featured her in this space a few months ago, accompanied by her circa-1855 ambrotype photo, expertly restored by Chris Clawson.

Had her daughter Mary Augusta taken it with her on her maiden voyage to Kansas, it undoubtedly would have soon vanished during Bloody Kansas guerrilla skirmishing between New England anti-slavery Free-Staters and Southern pro-slavery Border Ruffians from Missouri.

In the spring of 1856, Mary Augusta accompanied her first husband James Monroe Eldridge to Kansas City. There he and his brothers briefly owned and operated a hotel that served as a staging area for newcomers from the New England Emigrant Aid Company.

The Eldridge gang soon moved to Lawrence, where the brothers built two hotels – the Free State and the Eldridge – both of which were destroyed by Border Ruffians. The Eldridge Hotel was the target of the famous August 21, 1863 Quantrill Raid of Civil War lore. Had the blanket been there, its probability of survival would have been minimal.

Luckily, Mary Augusta was out of town for Quantrill’s blood-lust attack. As the frontier town burned and residents were murdered in the street, she was back home visiting her South Deerfield family, with young biological son Edwin in tow.

The teenage stepson she left behind in Lawrence was not so fortunate. Store clerk James Eldridge – born in South Deerfield to her husband’s deceased first wife – was shot down by Quantrill’s gunmen after opening the store’s safe for them.

I suppose our heirloom blanket might have accompanied mother Augusta on the passenger train back to Kansas, but it’s doubtful she would have risked it with the state so vulnerable.

Augusta was back in South Deerfield again during the summer of 1884 to celebrate her mother’s 90th birthday. Perhaps by then her mother thought it was time to part with her sentimental blanket. If not, Augusta returned to her old hometown for the last time in 1909, accompanied by adult son Edwin. By then, her mother had been dead more than 20 years. It was time for a move to Kansas.

Had she neglected to claim her inherited prize, it would likely have wound up in the family home where I spent my first 12 years. There, in the sunny front parlor that waked a few family members over the years, a red-stained 18th-century blanket chest with bootjack ends was cherished by “Antie.” It contained old, neatly folded blankets and quilts, an 1827 Bardwell sampler, and bagsful of fabric shards stored for patchwork quilt-making.

I believe that piece of furniture came across the river to South Deerfield whenever possession of the blanket was transferred from Sunderland’s Mary Smith Graham to her daughter Mary Graham Arms. Today the blanket chest stands against the east wall of my mother’s bedroom.

Although the History of Sunderland follows the bed blanket only as far as Mary Augusta, my private records take it a step further. An ink note concluding the genealogical records says that the “Blanket made by Mary Alexander [is] now (Aug. 21, 1913) held by Nellie Augusta Rickerson Colorado Springs, Colo, granddaughter of Mary Augusta Torbert.”

It’s worth noting that this note was entered into the record only three days before Mary Augusta’s death. As she lay dying, her family considered the blanket important enough to ask about its whereabouts. Thankfully, the response was promptly recorded for posterity.

Some 20 years ago I followed this lead, chasing down Nellie Rickerson’s Colorado grandson, Kurt Laidlaw, and querying him by email. He knew nothing about any heirloom blanket.

Now, an interesting little caveat.

In recent years of researching Bloody Kansas, I uncovered a tasty little tidbit I’m not yet finished exploring. I found it near the end of Mary Augusta Torbert’s lengthy Lawrence obituary in the July 30, 1913 Jeffersonian Gazette.

The bright, shiny object was that, to gain favor with Lawrence’s Plymouth Congregational Church – not to mention acceptance into its cemetery – Mary Augusta donated to the church “the gift of a valuable keepsake.”

The family blanket, perhaps? Did she prefer not to share that destination with family?

I reached out to the church in recent years and never received the courtesy of a response.

Who knows? The chase may someday justify a road trip.

So, stay tuned. I’d love to reunite that old heirloom blanket with its red-stained blanket chest with bootjack ends.