In 2004, JWA sponsored Andrea Kalinowski's Stories Untold: Jewish Pioneer Women 1850–1910 exhibition at the Boston Public Library as part of our 350th anniversary program events. Kalinowski’s multimedia canvases bring together quotations from diaries and news stories, photographs, and quilt patterns to tell stories from the lives of nine Jewish pioneer women. They also inspired the feature on jwa.org on Jewish women pioneers in the American West.

JWA was lucky to receive one of the pieces as a gift from Founding JWA Board Chair Barbara Dobkin—a quilt telling the story of Anna Marks. In 1880, Anna Marks and her husband immigrated to America and settled in Eureka City, a rich mining area 60 miles south of Salt Lake City. Anna Marks made a fortune in real estate and owned controlling interests in two mines near Eureka. She also invested money in diamonds. Not afraid to pull her guns on men who crossed her, Anna gained a reputation for being “the feistiest woman in the state.”

Today, Anna Marks’ quilt hangs in JWA’s conference room, inspiring us to live up to her fearless legacy.