For over fifty years, Magdalene Wilson made quilts in a project house in Pettway, before moving late in life to Mobile. Loretta Pettway, her next-door neighbor for many years, remembers her.
"Magdalene Wilson was a good neighbor, friendly, make you laugh a lot. She always had her a lot of money. She had a lot of land and we got this one acre from her next to her place. She help me raise all my kids and grandkids. She was good about giving me stuff, loan me food when we was without.
Her and Martha Jane [Pettway] and my grandmother Prissy was good friends. Magdalene was a good Christian woman, always go to church. She loved her cats. Never had no kids. She pieced and quilted her own quilts, in the shell. Make a curved line and then another; small rows and short stitches.
She got real stingy with her money when she got old and wouldn't even buy candy from the kids to raise money for the school. Done all her housework till they came and taken her to Mobile. Cook her own food, wash her own clothes. Kept the yard always so clean. But mighty close with that money."
