In late 1864, Charlotte Fitzgerald Hussey and her daughter, Susan A. Hussey, both living in Detroit, Michigan, presumably organized their relatives and friends from Massachusetts to California to create a long and narrow quilt for use in the Union’s military hospitals.The inscribed names symbolized nationwide support of wounded soldiers, and the flag shield in the quilt’s center symbolized their defense of the nation by caring for soldiers. War's traumas had personally touched the Hussey family: Augustus Hussey, Charlotte's son who served in the24th Michigan Volunteer Regiment, had been in a Confederate prison for six months at the time the quilt was made.