In the fall of 1873, Mrs. Elizabeth Archer, then eighty years of age, gave to the writer a piece of a dress made with her own hands more than sixty years before. The family of her uncle, with whom she moved from Georgia, to St. Clair county, Illinois, in 1811, brought some cotton in the bolls, for the purpose of using the seed in growing cotton in their new home. Miss Holt, as her name then was, obtained the consent of her uncle to apply the cotton to her own use. She picked it from the bolls and separated the cotton from the seed with her fingers, and spun it on a wheel, borrowed from a neighbor more than thirty miles distant. She had a rude loom constructed for the purpose, and had just commenced weaving, when the first assassination among the white settlers, by the Indians took place, as the beginning there of the war with England. That occurred in June, 1812. She, with her uncle's family, fled to Fort Bradsby, a rude wooden fortification near by. Appealing to the Lieutenant in command for protection, he reported the case to Governor Edwards, who authorized him to grant her request. A guard was accordingly placed around the cabin, and kept there until the weaving was completed. The design was unique and beautiful. The cloth was carefully preserved, some of it bleached to snowy whiteness and made into a dress. She wore it for the first time to a quarterly meeting in 1818, just after the close of the war, and attracted universal attention as the finest dressed lady in that region of the country.