Our History

Maxine Rice started the Whitman House Quilt Shop as a result of a pleasure trip to Lancaster, Pennsylvania over 20 years ago. There, she met an Amish housewife named Hanna, who had just started her quilt business by hanging a simple wooden sign that read, ‘Quilts’.

It was the beginning of a wonderful friendship that spanned some 20 years until Maxine’s unfortunate death in 2003 of lung cancer.

As a result of the fortunate friendship, the Whitman House Quilt Shop is the largest of its kind in New England, if not all of North America.

The shop has over 300 quilts in inventory at any one time, and ships quilts all over the world. As a result of its tremendous growth it became necessary to find Amish housewives from every Amish community.

We now carry Amish quilts and handmades from Amish housewives from all over Pennsylvania, Ohio, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Wisconsin, Iowa and several other states.

As a result of these vast resources, we are able to offer the lowest prices available and a full money-back guarantee if you aren’t completely satisfied.

After Maxine’s untimely death on March 3rd in 2003, lifelong Cape Cod resident Maureen Wdowiak took the reigns of the Whitman House Quilt Shop and has carried on the business and legacy that Maxine first initiated