Summary: All areas of the state are covered: from Galena, Nauvoo, and Belleville to Chicago, Peoria, and Cairo and scores of details are provided on everything from women concocting dyes, potters and silversmiths advertising their wares, and women creating quilts out of hoarded scraps of cotton calico, to the lives of such itinerant artists as Sheldon Peck and Patrick Henry Davenport.