Grace Snyder


Grace Bell McCance Snyder, American quilter, former pioneer and centenarian, whose story is known through and .

Biography

Childhood

Grace McCance went to Nebraska with her parents in 1885 to homestead in a sod house in Custer County. She had nine siblings. As a small child, she pieced quilt blocks while tending the family's cows.

Adulthood

McCance married Bert Snyder in 1903 and lived on a ranch forty miles northwest of North Platte, where they raised four children: Nellie Snyder Yost, Miles, Billie, and Bertie.
The relatively isolated ranch life gave her ample time for quilting, and she became 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.
McCance lived to be 100 years old. She died in her sleep. She is buried in North Platte Cemetery in North Platte, Nebraska.

Books

She is remembered by her own memoir 'No Time On My Hands' as told to her daughter Nellie Snyder Yost.
Her story is also told in the children's biography by Andrea Warren.