Hester Malone was born in the 1820s in County Cork, Ireland, the youngest of eight children. Considered a frail child, she was sent to live in Dublin with two maiden aunts who had a dressmaking establishment. There, she went to school and learned fine stitchery. At 16, she journeyed to America to live with an older sister on Staten Island. She worked as a governess and as a seamstress. At some point she married a fellow Irish immigrant William Wright. They moved to Illinois, where William became a farmer. Hester Wright sewed this quilt around the year 1860. At that point she lived in a log cabin with her husband, four-year-old daughter, and two-year-old son in rural La Prairie Center, 20 miles north of Peoria. Although little La Prairie was reported in an 1858 Illinois Directory as just a cluster of buildings, it also had the reputation of being an anti-slavery town and a safe haven for freedom seekers traveling north to Canada. Through the war, the La Prairie Ladies’ Loyal League sent shipments of clothing to regional branches of the United States Sanitary Commission, a private relief agency created by federal legislation on June 18, 1861, to support sick and wonded soldiers.