Spotlight: In-Depth Dive
into Noteworthy Needlework
From time to time, we post in-depth studies of significant samplers, or groups of samplers
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Spotlight: In-Depth Dive
into Noteworthy Needlework
From time to time, we post in-depth studies of significant samplers, or groups of samplers
Sampler Made by Julia Ann Shorey at the Boston Female Asylum, Boston, Massachusetts, July 22, 1806
by Mary Yacovone, Massachusetts Historical Society,
with minor additions by Amy Finkel
Samplers can tell very personal stories and this particular sampler is certainly one of the most interesting of this genre. It is now in the collection of the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum, in Washington, DC.
The optimism and earnest display of newly learned skills evidenced on seven-year-old Julia Ann Shorey’s 1806 sampler stitched at the Boston Female Asylum betray little of the curious and tragic story behind it. The first lines of her verse, “The Lightning’s awful stroke destroyed / My youth’s support my Parents’ dear” provides us with a hint, but the rest of the story is even more compelling....(read more)