The fabric simply appeared in a donation one day, about in June, and now the Eastside Community Aid Thrift Shop is deeply involved in a mystery.

The mystery centers on how a woven coverlet came to appear at the shop near Totem Lake, or perhaps where it had been for 163 years.

“It’s a special little piece,” said Jody Orbits, thrift shop president. “I didn’t know if it was real or not.”

Research determined it is real, however, and now the coverlet is back to where it started, in Ohio.

Where it’s been in the intervening years, however, probably will never be known, and the mystery of how it managed to survive the events of those years in its well-preserved, unfaded, condition is likely to remain unsolved.

“Maybe it came across in a wagon,” said Orbits. “Maybe it came out recently, from someone who was transplanted at Microsoft.”

The main clue to the background of the coverlet is an inscription woven into a corner:

“Somerset Ohio

“1848

“L. Hesse

“Weaver”

That was enough for Carolyn Davis, a shop volunteer with a certification in museum studies from the University of Washington, to begin her research.

“This L. Hesse person is documented,” said Davis. “He lived in Somerset, Ohio.”

Further research revealed that he did his weaving between the 1830s and the 1860s, that he’d come from Germany 1809, that his wife’s name was Madeline and he was once identified in Ohio records as being a 41-year-old weaver with real estate valued at $800, Davis added.

But beyond that, no information was found that would even hint at how the fabric, believed to be a mix of wool and cotton, came to appear thousands of miles away in Kirkland.

The final question, of course, to anyone who might watch “Antiques Roadshow” on public television, is how much such a piece of cloth might be worth.

“I should say certainly hundreds of dollars,” said Orbits.

The shop workers have no plans to try to more precisely get a value, Orbits added, and in fact have other plans for the fabric.

An online review of such coverlet values, incidentally, reveals such coverings generally have sold for from $400 to $3,000, with some 1840s Ohio weavings bringing as much as $60,000.

But one Ohio museum responded to a shop inquiry that it has about 400 such coverlets and couldn’t use another.

Orbits and Davis eventually found a recipient at the Perry County Historical Society, where Somerset, Ohio, is located, and plan to donate it to that organization.

“It just seemed like it needed to go home,” said Davis.

That might seem like a fitting ending, but it’s also nearly impossible not to touch the fabric, and think of the things that have happened since 1848 — the Civil War, the settling of the West, World War I, the Depression, World War II, births and deaths and tumult and success, and wonder how the piece of cloth came to survive.

“They drop things off, and they’re gone,” said Orbits.

More information

The Eastside Community Aid Thrift Shop is at 12451 116th Ave. N.E., Kirkland.