What is a coverlet? Originally, any covering for a bed; now, specifically, the outer covering. The word comes from the French _couvre-lit_--a bed covering. The handwoven coverlets of many beautiful designs, in blue and white and red and brown, are well known and formerly were woven everywhere.
The _counter-pane_, formerly a bed cover, now describes a light coverlet woven of cotton with raised figures. The word is a corruption of _counterpoint_, in allusion to the panes or squares of which bed covers are often composed. The counterpane was never quilted.
The _bedspread_ and the _bed cover_ may be considered as one and the same--the uppermost covering of a bed and accordingly of an ornamental character in general. The _comforter_ was a thickly quilted bed cover made of several thicknesses of sheet cotton or wool prepared for the purpose. This was too thick to be quilted so it was knotted at regular intervals to prevent the interlining from slipping out of place. Frequently it was called a "comfort."
There is one other name that was applied to a bed covering in the Colonial times but which is never heard today in that connection. In the days immediately following the settlement many a New England bed was covered with a _rug_. When William Clarke of Salem died in 1647, in the parlor of his house was a bed with a green rug covering it which was valued by the appraisers at fourteen shillings. The term was commonly in use at the time, in fact, as commonly as the word coverlet. In the probate of Essex County, Massachusetts, estates between the years 1635 and 1674, coverlets are mentioned one hundred and forty-two times and rugs one hundred and fifty-seven times while quilts are listed only four times. These early bed rugs were usually thick woolen coverings with a shaggy nap.
A never-failing source of accurate information as to the furnishings and equipment of the New England household in the olden time is the probate records--specifically, the inventory of the property taken in connection with the settlement of the estate. For many years it was the well-nigh universal custom to list, room by room, the contents of a house and from these painstaking inventories it now becomes possible to reconstruct in mental picture the interiors of those homes where lived and died our Puritan ancestors. In connection with the present subject we learn from these inventories that it was quite the usual habit to set up a bed in the parlor and we also learn of the existence of different kinds of rugs used in the bed furnishings--cotton rugs, English rugs, Irish rugs, cradle rugs, etc. There were worsted coverlets, tapestry coverlets and embroidered coverlets. A darnacle coverlet is listed in 1665; but as darnacle curtains appear in the same inventory it is safe to assume that darnacle is the name of some long-forgotten fabric. But what is a "branched coverlet?" Mrs. Thomas Newhall of Lynn possessed in 1674 a green rug and a branched coverlet.