A new publication, Columbia’s Daughters: Girlhood Embroidery from the District of Columbia by Gloria Seaman Allen, is a regional study of the samplers and pictorial embroideries wrought by girls in the late eighteenth to mid-nineteenth centuries in three communities: Alexandria, Georgetown, and the new federal entity called Washington City. Although the three areas were merged to form the District of Columbia, their political, economic, and social dynamics varied greatly. This in turn affected the education available to girls and young women living in the District, and their access to needlework instruction “plain and ornamental.”
In Alexandria, daughters of the merchant and artisan class, who were fortunate to study with Sarah Eliza Edmonds, created exquisite embroidered pictures on silk with applied and painted faces and limbs. Others stitched detailed silk embroidered maps that featured the “Plan of the City of Washington.”
Across the Potomac River in Georgetown, daughters of prominent Catholics learned their needlework skills at the Young Ladies’ Academy, founded in 1799 by women who eventually became organized as the Order of the Visitation. Their school, the oldest in the original United States continues today as Georgetown Visitation Preparatory School. In addition to embroidered pictures of their school grounds, students stitched samplers, initially imbued with religious symbolism, but which became more secular over time.
The newly created area, known as Washington City, attracted teachers from Philadelphia, the former seat of federal government, and other cities. Daughters of craftsmen employed in or near the Washington Navy Yard stitched architectural samplers over a period of more than thirty years that document the continuation of a community style.
Appendices, compiled by Susi B. Slocum and Sheryl De Jong, of known needlework, teachers and schools, and needlework entries from Young Ladies’ Academy ledgers follow the narrative.
Columbia’s Daughters will be available in December, but signed and/or inscribed copies may be ordered in advance by going to www.dcneedlework.com.