Back row: Randy Gibbs, vice president; Kerry Wolfe, president; front row: Chris Nelson, member at large; Pat Spencer, treasurer and Patty Burke, secretary
Nora Graf
On Thursday, March 3, 2016, The SaddleBrooke Genealogy Club will welcome Carolyn O’Bagy Davis who will be talking about Goldie Tracy Richmond, a quilt maker from the Tucson area, and how quilts can integrate with family history.
Carolyn is a fourth-generation descendant of Utah pioneers, has written ten books on the history of archaeology, quilting and western history. She earned her B.A. in Anthropology from the University of Arizona in 1971. Carolyn lectures extensively to history, archaeology and quilting groups around the country and has curated many traveling museum exhibits. Carolyn was the founding president of the Tucson Quilters Guild (1976) and also Old Pueblo Archaeology Center (1994). She has served on the board of the American Quilt Study Group, the Treasure Hill Foundation (Mimbres Culture preservation), the Arizona Archaeological and Historical Society and was recently inducted into the Society of Women Geographers (the women’s association affiliated with the Explorer’s Club); she was profiled in They Made Their Mark: An Illustrated History of the Society of Women Geographers. Davis has appeared on Simply Quilts, a feature program on HGTV, American Quilter on Lifetime and assisted with a film documentary on the history of Hopi Indian quilting produced with support from PBS. In September 2010, she was inducted into the Arizona Quilter’s Hall of Fame.
Goldie Preston was born in Kansas in 1896. When she was 21, Goldie married Marion Tracy, becoming his third wife. In 1927 the couple came to the remote desert country of southwestern Arizona. Goldie was 31 and Marion was 68 and in declining health. The Tracys tried to earn a living through prospecting, but when the Depression hit, they switched to trapping in the unending effort to survive in the harsh country.
In 1932 Goldie and Marion opened Tracy’s Trading Post at San Simon, 110 miles west of Tucson on the Tohono O’odham (formerly known as Papago) Reservation. Goldie learned to speak the Tohono O’odham language and was widely known as one of the most respected Anglo traders on the Reservation. Rosamond Spicer, an anthropologist who worked with the Tohono O’odham, wrote that people went miles out of their way to trade at Goldie’s store. After Marion’s death in 1936, Goldie kept the trading license and continued to run the store. She married Jim Richmond in the 1940s and the two of them stayed in San Simon another 20 years.
Goldie always stitched quilts to sell in the trading post. After her marriage to Jim she had more time to develop her exceptional pictorial designs, which won blue ribbons and cash prizes at state and county fairs. Goldie’s original appliqué quilts depicting scenes of Tohono O’odham daily life are magnificent fabric portraits of the Sonoran Desert and its people. The sale of her prize winning quilts to passing tourists provided valuable income.
The presentation will begin at 1:00 p.m. in the Coyote Room located at the SaddleBrooke Clubhouse.