Grace McCance

Grace McCance(1882-1982) came to Nebraska with her parents in 1885 to homestead in a sod house in Custer County. As a small child, she pieced quilt blocks while tending the family's cows. She is remembered by her own memoir "No Time on My Hands" and her story is told in the children's biography, "Pioneer Girl: Growing Up on the Prairie" by Andrea Warren (Morrow Junior Books, 1998). Grace married Bert Snyder in 1903 and lived on a ranch fifty miles north of North Platte. The relatively isolated ranch life gave her ample time for quilting, and she became a 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. Grace lived to be a 100 years old.