A Stitch In Time: Exploring the Urge to Modify Antebellum Samplers

During the mid-1830s, eight-year-old Eleanor Caroline Malone (1828-1894) of Boston, Massachusetts, made a sampler.¹ With flowering vine, alphabets, verse, trees and house motif, it resembles countless schoolgirl samplers. Malone signed hers in traditional fashion along the bottom, "Eleanor Caroline Malone aged 8 years." When she originally stitched the sampler, it also included the year it was made, stitched after her age. But, at some later date, that year was removed from the sampler, each digit deliberately picked out.

Medical guides, prescriptive literature, fictional stories about grandmothers, and portraits of aging women all presented a social and cultural ideal of what older women in antebellum America should look like and how they were to act. Modest, demure, quiet and sweet, antebellum women of a certain age were to resign themselves to their eventual passing, seek a place in heaven, and serve as a role model for the rising generation. One 1852 book painted a picture in words of the model older woman asking “Where could we get another grandmamma for the warm corner? Dear old lady, with her well-starched laces, her spotless white satin cap-riband, her shining black silk gown and shawl, her knitting, and her foot-stove.”² However, this description, while employing a sense of love and cherished memory, also suggests a darker undertone: the black gown with “well-starched” and “spotless” linens could be interpreted to indicate a woman set in her ways who eschewed the march of progress. She retained her style of dress and mode of work, pursuing the industry and gentility she was taught as a girl without, presumably, adapting or embracing new ideas. 

The alteration of Malone's sampler seems distinctly at odds with antebellum prescriptive literature, which provided specific goals for aging women: "The woman that knows how to grow old gracefully, will adapt her dress to her figure and her age, and wear colors that suit her present complexion...she will allude to her age as a thing, of course, she will speak without hesitation of former times, though the recollection proves her to be really old."³ Women like Malone did not generally leave letters or diaries explaining the choice to unstitch part of their samplers so the nagging question of why it happened remains. Vanity seems a likely explanation for why antebellum women wanted to turn back time: to stem the tide of growing older by recapturing their youth, or to escape the encroaching reality of life’s end. In addition, as mature women experienced menopause, signaling the end of their childbearing years, they were set free from the biological restraints of menstruation and pregnancy, giving some a second lease on life along with a new sense of freedom and purpose.⁴

While religious texts and social pressure defined the ideal for aging women – to age gracefully, remain productive and instruct their children and grandchildren in appropriate values – the existence of antebellum prescriptive literature suggests that not all women were doing so. One author wrote quite plainly that she intended to provide instruction on how to “grow old gracefully,” because some of “those who have passed through that stage [youth] are not quite willing enough to retire and leave a clear field for others.”⁵ Often, writers tried to persuade women to look upon aging as something positive. As Lydia Maria Child (1802-1880) explained, “If women could only believe it, there is a wonderful beauty even in growing old.”⁶ Eliza Leslie (1787-1858) equated age with beauty and acknowledged that around “middle age” a woman would lose either face or figure. But, this was not without a trade-off, for “a woman with a good mind, a good heart, and a good temper, can never at any age grow ugly – for an intelligent and pleasant expression is in itself beauty, and the best sort of beauty.”⁷

In reality, most aging middle-class women did achieve the acceptance preached by etiquette guides and Sunday sermons. In her survey of the letters and diaries of aging American women between 1785 and 1835, Terri L. Premo found that most women were unconcerned with appearing younger than their years.⁸ For example, diarist Joanna Graham Bethune (1770-1860) wrote of her resignation and acceptance of growing older in many entries, including one on her seventieth birthday in February 1840, “My birthday, and which completes my threescore and ten years. I can now say with my mother, “I have turned the last point, and am now waiting a favorable breeze to shoot into port.” I have, on my knees, reviewed my past life from childhood to old age…When I review my past life, I am amazed at the goodness and mercy which has followed me from the cradle, and which I trust shall follow me to the grave.”⁹ Yet for every Joanna Bethune who worked to “grow old gracefully,” there was also an Eleanor Caroline Malone, presumably so determined to hide her age that she picked out identifying information stitched into her girlhood sampler. Samplers like this one ceased to be an educational exercise and instead provided the agency for mature women to mediate the divide between their reality and antebellum cultural ideals.

Malone was not alone in removing age-identifying information from her girlhood sampler. Recent research for A Stitch In Time: The Needlework of Aging Women in Antebellum America identified twenty-eight such samplers.¹⁰ These samplers are generally in good condition with just a few numbers missing in key spots; they are not suffering from deterioration throughout, nor do they have tears or rips that have rendered them illegible. The missing numbers are clearly the conscious work of the maker or another person. Take, for example, the sampler made by Sally M. Bowen (1789-1872) of Marblehead, Massachusetts.¹¹ Based on its similarities to other samplers from the area, Bowen probably stitched her sampler around 1800 when she was eleven.¹² At a later date, the year that she made the sampler was removed.

In this group of twenty-eight samplers, almost half (13) were altered by having part of all of the year the sampler was originally made picked out. Another eleven samplers were altered by having part or all of the maker’s age or birth year picked out. Three samplers were altered by especially determined women; they have part or all of both the age or birth year and the year the sampler was made removed. And, one sampler had stitching picked out, but it is unclear what the missing information conveyed. In many cases – seventeen out of the twenty-eight samplers identified – these alterations, designed to conceal information, remain successful today despite the wide accessibility of genealogical records at research libraries and on the internet. Without crucial bits of information such as the maker’s birth year or age in a particular year, the lives of these makers cannot be traced, particularly when there is more than one girl with the same name born around the same time. For example, the sampler made by Emily C. Rawlings (dates unknown) cannot be conclusively identified or dated today.¹³

When she originally stitched the piece, Rawlings included a line along the bottom with her name “Emily C. Rawlings wrought this [picked out].” The remaining part of the line probably read “in her 10^th year,” based on the few stitches that remain and the “ghosting” of the previously-stitched letters visible on the fabric. A comparison of the design and format to other samplers, whose origin is conclusively identified, suggests that Rawlings made her sampler in Baltimore in the 1820s, but we cannot know for sure, as there were several girls named Emily Rawlings in Maryland at the time.¹⁴

For the other altered samplers identified in this study (11), the maker can be identified and her life dates at least partially filled in. With the help of published sources, the sampler made by Sarah L. Art (1793-1875) in 1806 can be determined to have been made when she was thirteen.¹⁵ At the time she made the sampler she included her age, but these numbers were later picked out, although when and why are not known.

The literature on American samplers shows that the act of altering them was not uncommon. As one scholar explains, “A large number of sampler embroideries underwent similar alterations as their makers grew to adulthood.”¹⁶ Overwhelmingly, these same sources explain this act as one of vanity, stating that “many women disliked such conspicuous evidence of their age.”¹⁷ But, these authors, products of our own time, accept that a woman would want to hide her age and do not problematize the act in a historical context.

Decorative schoolgirl samplers like the ones identified here were made to be framed and hung proudly on the wall of the family parlor. Countless newspaper ads from the early nineteenth century offered frames specifically to display needlework.¹⁸ An English cartoon from 1809 (image below) shows the prominent placement of one girl’s framed sampler in her parents’ parlor; the same tradition was followed in America.¹⁹ Sarah Anna Smith Emery (1787-1879) of Newbury, Massachusetts, remembered that “One was considered very poorly educated who could not exhibit a sampler; some of these were large and elaborate specimens of handiwork; framed and glazed, they often formed the chief ornament of the sitting room or best parlor.”²⁰ In 1858, twelve-year-old Susan Bradford Eppes (1846-1942) noted in her diary “This is Father’s Birthday and my picture of The Temple of Time was ready for him. He was pleased and surprised. It is prettily framed and is hanging on the Library wall.”²¹ While continuing to showcase a woman’s skill with the needle and her familiarity with the elements of a genteel lifestyle, by the time she entered her forties and beyond the sampler also continued to proclaim its maker’s age to all who entered the parlor.

The interpretation that aging women picked out numbers from their samplers themselves to hide their age is compelling. But this seems to be a direct contrast to prevailing cultural prescriptions to act one’s age. The authors of prescriptive literature did not specifically discourage the act of altering one’s sampler, but they did counsel women to act their age and to be proud of their life experiences by “speak[ing] without hesitation of former times.”²² By implication, they offered reasons not to alter a schoolgirl sampler, instead encouraging women to cherish an item like their sampler as a touchstone to the past, even though the sampler would indicate its maker’s aging station in life.

But, prescriptive literature routinely contradicts practice and the choice made by these women to act with their needles is revealing. The sampler itself was generally a girlhood project, and, like other forms of sewing, was taught, in part, by requiring the girl to take out stitches that were not correct. The narrator of one 1852 story explained the frustration that this method often involved: “very seldom did [my teacher] let me put up my work till the “stint” was done. And so, with much inward fuming and fretting, I learned to sew, and very neatly too; for what was done ill must be picked out.”²³ No less an authority than Catharine Beecher (1800-1878) set out the ideal. “The neatest sewers always fit and baste their work, before sewing,” she claimed, “and they say they always save time in the end, by so doing, as they never have to pick out work, on account of mistakes.”²⁴ Picking out her age from her sampler may have offered a sense of agency to these women, in comparison to their girlhood sewing lessons.

Lucretia Buttrick’s (1801-1892) sampler, originally stitched in the 1810s, was altered later in its life when her age was removed. And, Buttrick was not exact about her age on the U.S. Census as she grew older. In 1850, she was listed as forty-nine years old – her correct age – but in 1860, she was listed as fifty-three years old, six years younger than she actually was. In 1870, she gave her age as fifty-eight, eleven years less than her true age.²⁵ In his study of the history of aging in America, David Hackett Fischer discovered that a certain type of “age heaping,” providing an incorrect age to the census taker, increased on late-nineteenth century census returns. During the eighteenth century, it was quite common for people to round off their ages to end in a five or a zero because they either did not know how old they were, or did not care. However, Fischer found that as literacy increased, this kind of age heaping decreased; instead, people pretended to be younger than they were. He asserts that it was most common for men in their forties and fifties to lie about their age on the census, but the large number of samplers with picked out ages and years suggests that women were equally conscious of their age in the mid-nineteenth century.²⁶

By 1880, Buttrick had slightly lessened the gap between her actual age and the age she gave the census taker; she was listed as seventy-five years old (instead of her actual age of seventy-nine).²⁷ At some point as a girl she made a sampler that initially included both the year that she made it and her age at that time. Although that information has not been recovered, genealogical records provide information about her birthdate in 1801 and subsequent marriage in 1828. When Buttrick died at the grand old age of ninety, her family produced an elegant memorial card in her honor. Black with gold-stamped lettering, the card includes an image of a book with lettering on its cover, “In Loving Remembrance / of / Mrs. Lucretia Buttrick / Died January 14, 1892 / Aged 90 Years.”²⁸

The actions of Lucretia Buttrick and the other women discussed here help to show that the aging process was not always embraced in antebellum America. Reactions to growing older varied from woman to woman and from decade to decade. Yet, many women shared a common bond – their girlhood sampler – which remained with them throughout their lives, for better or for worse.

Aimee E. Newell, Ph.D., is Director of Collections at the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library. This article is excepted from her dissertation and her recent book, A Stitch In Time: The Needlework of Aging Women in Antebellum America.