Grace Bell McCance

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_McCance

Grace Bell McCance Snyder (April 23, 1882 – December 8, 1982), American quilter, former pioneer and centenarian, whose story is known through No Time on My Hands and Pioneer Girl: Growing Up on the Prairie books.

Childhood

Grace McCance went to Nebraska with her parents in 1885 to homestead in a sod house in Custer County. She had nine siblings. As a small child, she pieced quilt blocks while tending the family's cows.

Adulthood

McCance married Bert Snyder in 1903 and lived on a ranch forty miles (70 km) northwest of North Platte, where they raised four children: Nellie, Miles, Billie, and Bertie.

The relatively isolated ranch life gave her ample time for quilting, and she became nationally recognized for the skill and complexity of her quilts. The Congress of Quilters Hall of Fame in Arlington, Virginia, inducted her in 1980, as did the Nebraska Quilters Hall of Fame in 1986.

McCance lived to be 100 years old. She died in her sleep. She is buried on North Platte Cemetery in North Platte, Nebraska.

Books

She is remembered by her own memoir All Roads Lead West Bound Set. Her story is told in the children's biography Pioneer Girl: Growing Up on the Prairie by Andrea Warren (Morrow Junior Books, 1998).