Delia Bennett was the matriarch of an extended family of quiltmakers, including her daughters Creola B. Pettway, Georgiana Pettway, and Ella Mae Irby. Her quilts’ emphatic and wildly asymmetrical geometries are echoed in quilts by her granddaughters, Mary L. Bennett and Linda Diane Bennett. In 1999, Bennett's daughter Ella Mae Irby described her mother.
"My mama was Delia Bennett; daddy named Eddie Bennett. She lived on a farm, born 1892, and raised here in Gee’s Bend. Her daddy S.S. Pettway and mama Pleasant Pettway. She raised seven girls and four boys. We farmed. Lived on the Brown plantation under what they called “landlords.” Cotton, corn, peas, sorghum syrup, hogs, cows. My father was born in 1886.
The main thing I know about my mama was she was kind of rough on your tail. A smart lady, farmed right along with us until she got disabled. Got sickly, and after that she stayed and kept house, a hard job with eleven children to care for. Back at that time you worked for thirty cents, forty cents a day, and out of that you pay the landlords."
