On view September 3, 2011–January 8, 2012

In 2006 Plimoth Plantation in Massachusetts began an exciting and innovative project to accurately re-create a 17th-century embroidered woman’s jacket. The process of designing and making what has become known as the Plimoth Jacket has shed new light on the tools and methods employed by the skilled embroiderers of the 1600s. Using the Plimoth Jacket as a touchstone, With Cunning Needle delves into the designs, materials, techniques, and makers of embroidery over four centuries.

Explore each step in the process of creating needlework, from skeins of silk and pattern books to embroidered bed covers and silkwork pictures. Learn about the women and men who made these beautiful objects for themselves, their friends and families, and commercial sale. Discover “lost” skills that have been revived through the Plimoth Jacket project.

With Cunning Needle explores the history of embroidery and invites visitors to take a closer look at the wide array of styles, technology, and people reflected by this art form. 

Apron, England; 1730-40. Silk with gold and silver on silk. 1987.84 Gift of Drs. Irwin and M. Susan Irwin in honor of Florence C. Steigerwalt.

Pair of garters, worked by or for Mary Washington, Virginia; 1753. Silk on linen. 1965.2082.1,.2 Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont.

Summer uniform of an enlisted sailor, worn by Warren Opie (born 1835). Probably made and worn on the Susquehanna; 1850-54. Burlington, New Jersey. Linen, silk, wool. 1967.933a,b Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont

Only known Philadelphia African American sampler made at the Lombard Street School by Olevia Rebecca Parker, dated 1852.

Needlework Exhibition and Conference at Winterthur Museum

Historians have long recognized that family networks play a crucial role in the political, commercial and religious activities of both men and women. On a more personal level, many people researching their family genealogy have been frustrated at the difficulty finding their female ancestors. An exhibition and conference at Winterthur Museum entitled Who’s Your Daddy? Families in Early American Needlework explores how needlework can serve as primary-source material for understanding the history of families in early America .

Family connections can determine a person’s status in society. Obvious examples are the embroidered coats of arms worked by schoolgirls in the 18 th and early 19 th centuries. Sarah Holsworth’s sampler shows a very different aspect of this phenomenon, documenting not her own family but that of her teacher, Leah Galligher. Married in 1791, Leah Galligher and her husband, Francis, opened a school in Lancaster in 1797. Clearly there were problems with their marriage, as Leah filed for divorce soon after this sampler was made. The reason cited for her divorce was her husband’s impotency, which made the couple a focus of both gossip and slander. Perhaps Leah’s family history, displayed so publicly in the Holsworth home, was intended to document her respectability.

Many samplers list the names of parents and other close family members, providing genealogical information that is often elusive in more formal records. But Sarah Talley’s sampler documents a family tragedy. Listing the names and birth dates of her siblings on her sampler, we can see that the youngest, Lydia and Elihu, were twins born two days apart. Sarah’s mother, Lydia Forwood Talley, died on the day the second twin was born. Normally young girls worked simple marking samplers when they were about ten years old, but Sarah was seventeen in 1798. Since that was the year her father remarried, we can assume that Sarah had taken over the care of her younger siblings on the death of her mother, and would have had neither the time nor the opportunity to attend Mary Sullevan’s school, where she worked her sampler.

Sarah Wistar’s silkwork birds would be anonymous without the inscriptions on the back. She wrote on each one that it had been made in 1752, and designated them as gifts to her two great-nieces, Rebecca and Catharine. Later descendants added genealogical information about all three women, thereby documenting not only patterns of inheritance but the pride felt by their descendants in being part of the Wistar family. Often passed down through the women’s side of families, fragile early needlework only survives because it has been valued by generations of family members.

Gallery guides containing photographs will be available in the exhibition. Check Winterthur ’s website ( www.winterthur.org ) for an on-line version of the exhibition in early 2009.

Winterthur Museum & Country Estate
Winterthur, Delaware
October 4, 2008 - January 9, 2009
The Conference is scheduled for
Friday, October 17 - Saturday, October 18
For registration please call 800-448-3883
or visit winterthur.org for further information

Figure 1.
Sampler made by Sarah Holsworth
Lancaster , Pennsylvania ; 1799
Silk embroidered on linen
1957.671 Bequest of Henry Francis du Pont

Figure 2.
Talleyville , Delaware ; 1798 2000.67 Gift of Samuel A. Goodley and Marian Goodley Ebersole>

Figure 3-4.
Silkwork picture (and backboard)
Made by Sarah Wistar
Philadelphia , Pennsylvania ; 1752
Silk on silk
1964.120.1 Museum purchase

A new book, Threads of Useful Learning: Westtown School Samplers, authored by Westtown School archivist Mary Uhl Brooks, examines the needlework produced by Westtown students from 1799 until 1843, when sewing was removed from the curriculum.  This needlework – including several types of samplers such as darning, extract, marking, and medallion, along with embroidered celestial and terrestrial silk globes believed to have been made only at Westtown – is discussed in the context of the useful education and spiritual formation envisioned by the Quakers for their children.  Fully illustrated with pieces from Westtown School’s own extensive textile collection as well as others in museums and private collections, the book discusses this important schoolgirl needlework and the education, religious beliefs, and lives of the teachers and girls who created it. 

Westtown School (located in Chester County, Pennsylvania) was opened in 1799 by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting to provide Quaker children with a useful education in an environment wholly dedicated to their spiritual formation. Establishment of this yearly meeting school resulted in part from a concern about the future of the sect as the discipline of members who lived contrary to Friends’ stated testimonies increased; material prosperity for many Quaker families in the city brought challenges to the testimony of plainness, viewed as an outward sign of disregard for other testimonies; and the Quaker testimony of pacifism set the faithful apart from their fellow colonists during a time of great political, social, and economic upheaval for Quakers in 18^th century Philadelphia.[1]

How to ensure the survival of the sect?  Look to the next generation.  As J. William Frost stated in The Quaker Family in America, the only way to preserve Quakerism at this time “was for the children to adopt, preserve, and pass the faith on to their descendants. The children had to hold to the truth with the same degree of fervor as their parents.”[2] Westtown School was to play a major role in immersing Quaker children – during their formative years – in the daily habits of silence and spiritual circumspection in a physical setting void of superfluous comforts, so that these children might develop an adherence to their faith which would last throughout their lifetimes. It was in this school setting that scores of Westtown girls made samplers, silk embroidered globes, and other works with the needle, all under the watchful eyes of the sewing teachers. 

Much of Westtown School was modeled on Ackworth School in England which had been founded by London Yearly Meeting in 1779.  Nearby Ackworth was York School for Girls, founded by Esther Tuke and others in 1785, which also influenced Westtown needlework.  (This school, also referred to as the School in Trinity Lane, preceded the York Quarterly Meeting Girls’ School, now the Mount School.)  Philadelphia Quakers maintained close ties with their ancestral homeland and some traveled throughout Great Britain as ministers, including George Dillwyn (with wife Sarah) and Rebecca Jones. After her journey throughout the area from 1784 to 1788, Jones returned to Philadelphia with firsthand knowledge of the operation of these Quaker schools—and a sampler made for her by a student at Ackworth in 1788.[3] The maker, Candia Power, included a passage from “Considerations on Pure Wisdom and Human Policy,” in Serious Considerations on Various Subjects of Importance (1773) by John Woolman, a close friend of Rebecca Jones.  The Westtown collection also includes two pieces from York School, one made for Sarah Dillwyn.[4] These samplers are evidence of the strong ties among Quakers on both sides of the Atlantic—and their vision for the education of Quaker children. The needlework that Westtown girls began stitching in 1799 — darning, extract, marking, and medallion samplers — all derived from the styles taught to their counterparts in England. Important, too, was the selection of Elizabeth Bellerby as Westtown’s first sewing teacher.  She had been a student at York School in England, so likely she was quite familiar with the needlework styles to be taught at Westtown.

Some two hundred years after the opening of Westtown, there still is a plentiful body of needlework samplers made by Westtown girls that examined as a whole offers a window into the sewing school at Westtown. A look at over 260 samplers positively identified as made by students while at Westtown (about a third of which are in the school’s collection) suggests what may have transpired in that classroom so long ago.  Was there a particular order in which the different types of samplers were made by a student?  Was there a type of sampler made most often? Did styles change over the decades that sewing was part of the curriculum?  And that ever vexing question: Does the use of variant spellings of the school name on the samplers (e.g., West Town, West-Town, Weston) follow a pattern?  The answer to the last question is no. It seems neither time period nor type of sampler dictated the spelling of the school name on a piece.

Activities in the sewing school were clearly intertwined with the school’s overall curriculum. (The course of studies was much the same for boys and girls at Westtown, though boys studied surveying while girls had lessons in sewing.) Darning and marking (alphabet) samplers are evidence of the Quaker vision of a useful education, offering girls practice in needlework skills employed for invisible mending as well as marking linens at home. Extract samplers with their pious and moral verses were part of the spiritual formation of the students.  Students were not allowed to bring any books to school, so all literature available to them (from which these verses likely were selected) was approved by the committee overseeing the school.  In the classroom and through needlework, girls were introduced to authors whose works would improve their literacy while providing spiritual inspiration and reflection. Nineteenth-century book lists and catalogues – and the rare books themselves – currently in the Westtown School archives confirm this link between the sewing activities of the girls and literary works used for lessons in reading and grammar. 

The embroidered globes were perhaps more about lessons in geography and astronomy than needlework. Quaker education has long included an emphasis on the natural sciences for both practical and spiritual reasons because the better one understands the physical world and its workings, the better one knows the Creator.  Despite the volume of student letters, committee minutes, and other documents in the school archives, no information has been discovered pointing to the conception of the fabric globes at Westtown.  But what is known about the school’s curriculum during its early years makes it plausible that a teacher (or teachers) – or perhaps an ambitious student – determined that girls could and should make silk embroidered globes, both terrestrial and celestial. Through this exercise, girls not only studied the locations of continents and countries, stars and planets, and the relationship of earth and sky, but they made their own tools to do so. Globe-making is one area of Westtown’s sewing school not influenced by Ackworth or York School. Map samplers were worked at those English schools, but there is no evidence that embroidered globes were made.

Architectural samplers from Westtown School are very few in number, but their brief appearance made clear the purpose of the sewing school--or, more pointedly – what was not the purpose of the sewing school or the school as a whole. Dates connected with three of the six known embroidered views of Westtown’s first school building suggest they were made in 1804, so it seems a reaction from the Acting Committee to this needlework was swift.  In the minutes from a meeting in May, 1804, following comments on “exceptionable” pieces copied by scholars into their piece books is this: “The [visiting] Committee also stated that the Girls have latterly got into the practice of making very superfluous Needle Work, called in the School fine pattern Samplers & Views of the Boarding School which are designed for the purpose of framing and Exhibiting as pictures, as this kind of Employment appears to be contrary to the Rules adopted for the government of the School and the original design of the Institution, the Visiting Committee are therefore Requested to Encourage the mistresses to use Exertion to prevent such unnecessary works with the needle in future.”[5] It seems that was the end of architectural samplers at Westtown.  Embroidering a piece of needlework for display was not an exercise that would cultivate a pious and humble spirit.

While the Acting Committee did not find architectural samplers appropriate for the sewing school at Westtown, other area Quaker schools and instructors apparently felt no such restriction. A number of samplers from Burlington County, New Jersey, featured Westtown School as the centerpiece of highly decorative pastoral scenes. Some samplers of this type were made under the instruction of former Westtown students.  These pieces demonstrate that highly decorative needlework was not unfamiliar to Quaker women and girls, but clearly was discouraged at Westtown. 

Or was it? Medallion and spot motif samplers cannot be described as lessons in useful needlework as darning and marking samplers were. The designs were not utilitarian, nor were any moral or spiritual lessons imparted as with extract samplers. Nor were the medallion and spot motif samplers plain in a manner similar to other Westtown sampler types. They were colorful and decorative, with an abundance of geometric medallions and floral and animal motifs arranged in stylistic fashion. How can these samplers be reconciled as part of the useful education at Westtown?

As with most Westtown samplers, medallion ones were derived from the needlework traditions of English Quaker schools. Sarah (Tuke) Grubb penned the following about instructing girls in needlework at York School, “And whilst careful attention is paid to their improvement in necessary needlework & knitting, all that’s thought merely ornamental is uniformly discouraged.”[6] But samplers such as these were made at both York and Ackworth and became highly associated with Quaker needlework in general.   The two known Westtown samplers dated 1799 (the school’s opening year) are both medallion samplers, including one by Mary Hill, so this sampler type was part of the sewing school curriculum from the start.[7]   But there was continual oversight of needlework produced at the school, both by the teachers who routinely examined pieces made by the girls and insisted pin cushions with ribbons and other items deemed too fancy be destroyed, and the Visiting Committee which continued to report to the Acting Committee about ornamental needlework in the school.[8]  But the medallion samplers were never questioned, perhaps because many of the motifs came from nature or because the samplers were part of the tradition of English needlework – or a combination of both.  A look at the large, extant body of Westtown School needlework has illuminated our understanding of the medallion samplers as well as the other sampler types produced over a period of decades at this Philadelphia-area Quaker boarding school known for its schoolgirl needlework.  

This article is based on Threads of Useful Learning: Westtown School Samplers which will be available in January 2016.  The book includes 105 catalog entries with full color illustrations of samplers and globes, plus lists of all known Westtown-made samplers and globes. Copies of the book can be ordered from the Westtown School store by going to https://www.westtown.edu/page.cfm?p=1000384.

As far back as the 1980s, I considered the sampler made by Caroline Hite in 1841 to be iconic within the world of antique needlework. It is a wonderful, pictorial piece that is dominated by a large depiction of an officer on horseback - Washington crossing the Delaware - and entitled the same at the bottom of the sampler. Betty Ring and Davida Deutsch illustrated it in their article, “Homage to Washington in Needlework and Prints,” published in the February 1981 issue of The Magazine Antiques (plate XV, “present location unknown”). They included specific information about a very similar sampler, made in Somerset County, Pennsylvania one year later, in 1842, as well as the print source for the image. Additionally, the book, Samplers, by Susan Mayor and Diana Fowle, part of the Poster Art Series (Studio Editions LTD, London, 1990), included a large format print of Caroline Hite’s sampler as plate 35 (photo courtesy of Christie’s, New York). Over the years, we have seen many instances of pages from this Poster Art Series book framed and hung on a wall as if they were indeed samplers. These printed images measure anywhere from 8 to 11 inches in each dimension and when framed, can be somewhat effective.

Flash forward to January, 2014: Sotheby’s Important Americana auction included as lot 288 in their printed catalogue Caroline Hite’s extraordinary sampler, and I was absolutely delighted to see that it was back on the market. Rather than classifying it as the Pennsylvania sampler that it is, it gained some misinformation: the assigned genealogy to a Virginia maker and attribution to a school in Georgetown, District of Columbia. Notwithstanding the erroneous reference, it was Caroline’s sampler. At the time, I was committed to be the successful bidder at the upcoming auction. I made arrangements to view the sampler prior to the public opening of the auction preview, precisely to examine it closely and to get my ducks in a row for the sale. I took a train to New York a few days after the New Year holiday and then a taxi to Sotheby’s. My unhappy assessment and disappointment upon seeing it in person was immediate – it was a framed page of the poster art book! Much smaller than the actual sampler, it measured 9 inches square (the catalogue included this measurement in their description but I assumed that this was a typo). The fact that it was a print not a sampler had somehow escaped the Sotheby staff. I broke the news to them and they saw the problem immediately; they removed the “sampler” from the upcoming sale. In fact, before my train returned to Philadelphia, Sotheby’s pulled this lot from their online version of the auction’s catalogue.

Imagine my surprise when two years after that, Caroline Hite’s sampler appeared in a Christie’s auction catalogue! It was lot 199 in the Mr. and Mrs. Max R. Zaitz Collection, January 22, 2016. Again I took a train to New York, but this time I was rewarded. This time, it was truly the actual sampler in all its glory – measuring 17 inches by 18 inches, not the 9-inch square of the printed page, and just wonderful in person, with the portrayal of General Washington in his uniform sitting on his glorious horse dominating the sampler. It has a fresh, folky character and was beautifully made; the color and contrast add to the aesthetic appeal. I was smitten. Christie’s description of the sampler was partially wrong as they somehow assumed that Sotheby’s identification of Caroline Hite as a Virginia girl born 1822, died 1883 and with family ties to President James Madison was correct, but at least it was the original sampler. On the day of the auction, I was the high bidder and purchased the sampler on behalf of a private client. It sold for $30,000, including the auction’s buyer’s premium.

I then set out to do the proper genealogical research to reunite Miss Hite with her true identity. This was an easy project because the aforementioned 1981 article in The Magazine Antiques compared the Hite sampler to one made by Julia Imhoff of Somerset County, Pennsylvania, approximately 70 miles east and south of Pittsburgh. The Imhoff sampler is published in The Pennsylvania Germans: A Celebration of Their Arts 1683-1850 by Beatrice B. Garvan and Charles F. Hummel (Philadelphia Museum of Art and Winterthur, 1982).

Born on August 20, 1829 (note that the stitches that specified the last digit of the year of her birth were picked out), Caroline Hite was one of nine children born to John Hite (1798-1853) and Catherine (Kennedy) Hite (1799-1860) of Stoystown, Somerset County, Pennsylvania. Biographical Review Volume XXXII Containing Life Sketches of Leading Citizens of Somerset and Bedford Counties Pennsylvania (Boston, 1899), informs us that the Hite family in that area began with Caroline’s grandfather, Conrad Hite, a butcher, who was one of the very early settlers of Stoystown. The family was originally from Germany, having emigrated circa 1710. Caroline’s father, John, was a blacksmith and then innkeeper of the Hite Hotel. In 1852, Caroline married a merchant, Josiah Zimmerman (1825-1886), and they remained in Stoystown. They had at least two children, sons John and Hezekiah. Caroline died on February 8, 1903 and is buried at the International Order of the Oddfellows Cemetery along with many family members.

The print source used by both samplermakers, Caroline Hite and Julia Imhoff, was identified by Ring and Deutsch. Entitled, “Washington Crossing the Delaware,” this was published by Humphrey Phelps, 336 Bowery and 157 Broadway, New York, August 1, 1833. George Washington sits on his horse looking ahead, his face in three-quarter view and he holds a telescope in his right hand.

It has been my pleasure to have worked with this outstanding sampler and to help set the record straight. Caroline Hite’s sampler will remain a favorite of mine for many years to come. 

“Eclectic” could well be the term to categorize the DAR Museum exhibition, Telling Their Stories: 19 th Century Samplers and Silk Needlework. Opening April 11, 2008 and on view until August 30, 2008, the exhibition presents American needlework in many guises while turning attention to nineteenth-century events. Within the limits of time and gallery space, the museum features needlework reflective of feminine lives during years of extreme national and familial change. Whether the related stories concern the maker, teacher, family, or contemporary events, each has a bit of information connecting us to our distant past.

Given by her granddaughter, Caroline Newcomb’s silk printwork represents not only an early-nineteenth century ideal of feminine ornamental accomplishments but also the benefits of an expensive education (Fig.1). However, Caroline’s skills do not disguise death’s reality as she memorializes grandparents and six brothers and sisters, all of Dutchess County, New York.

Forty-one years later and a world away in Iowa, Susannah McClure’s sampler does not begin to tell the stories of her family’s migration across the United States, her permanent deafness from scarlet fever, her life as a teacher, wife and mother in “the silent world” described by her son (Fig.2). It is through family histories, census records, church and cemetery records and local, state and national archives that researchers look for answers about Susannah and others.

More than eighty pieces of needlework represent diversity not only in composition and ability, but also in locale and circumstance. The exhibition also illustrates long-lived designs and verses traversing the globe and across America, much as the restless populace moved on. A certain melding of designs was inevitable. Louisa Martha Vanlaw incorporated familiar Quaker motifs with other atypical design elements in her beautiful Ohio sampler, possibly reflecting the New Jersey heritage of older family members (Fig.3).

Lives cannot be condensed into exhibition labels, but whenever possible a connection is made to their own time and place. Telling Their Stories hopefully adds a fragment of information about 19th century needleworkers viewed with a 21 st century perspective.

Olive Blair Graffam
Curator of Collections/Research Associate
DAR Museum
1776 D Street NW
Washington , DC 20006

The DAR Museum is pleased to host a sampler symposium on May 29, 2008 from 8:30 AM until 4:00 PM. It is a pleasure to welcome Amy Finkel, Elisabeth Garrett Widmer, Janet S. Hasson, and Dr. Mary C. Beaudry as the featured speakers. Please contact the DAR Museum at museum@dar.org, 202-879-3240, or 202-879-3237 for information or a registration brochure.

Fig.1
Needlework picture , 1817
Caroline Litchfield Newcomb
Litchfield Female Academy
Silk and watercolor on silk

Gift of Mrs. John H. Bruns in memory   64.129
Of Caroline Newcomb Cheeseman
Granddaughter of Caroline L. Newcomb
Photograph by Mark Gulezian/ Quicksilver

Fig.2
Sampler , 1858
Susannah McClure
Iowa City , Iowa
Wool and silk on linen

Friends of the Museum Purchase     2007.27
Photograph, courtesy M. Finkel & Daughter

Fig.3
Sampler , 1834
Louisa Martha Vanlaw
Belmont County , Ohio
Silk on linen

Friends of the Museum Purchase     2005.48
In honor of Linda B. Wetzel, Curator General
NSDAR, 2004-2007
Photograph by Mark Gulezian/ Quicksilver

From time to time, we plan to post an in-depth study of an important sampler and hope that you enjoy this one, in honor of Martin Luther King Day

A great rarity, this sampler was made by an 11-year-old free Black girl, Jane Freedom, living in Norfolk, Litchfield County, Connecticut, about 35 miles northwest of Hartford.

The needlework presents relatively simple alphabets and a row of strawberries along the bottom. These were accomplished in the queen’s-stitch, a sophisticated technique that was generally taught only to advanced samplermakers. Remarkably, Jane’s needle is still in her sampler, nearby an incomplete line of stitching at the bottom of the sampler.

Photo of Jane Freedom's Sampler (above) and detail of included needle (below).

Jane was the daughter of Peter (1774/5-1837) and Bilhah Freedom (1783-1871), free Blacks who were married in 1812 and lived in Norfolk, Connecticut. She was born in 1819, the second of their three children. Peter Freedom and his family are recorded in the 1800, 1810, 1820 and 1830 US Census records, living in Norfolk.

Jane lived for only five years after she made her sampler; she died on February 26, 1835, and is buried at Center Cemetery in Norfolk, along with her parents. Record of the deaths of this family are included in Connecticut, U.S. Hale Collection of Cemetery Inscriptions … 1629-1934.

Her grandfather was Dolphin Freedom, an enslaved man owned by Capt. Abraham Camp of Norfolk. There is record in Durham, Connecticut of Dolphin’s marriage in 1764 to Zillah, an enslaved woman who was owned by Lieut. David Coe of Middletown, Connecticut. Their son, Peter, was Jane’s father.

An online article written by Ryan Bachman and published in “Norfolk Now,” September 1, 2015, provides much more information about the Freedom family. “Following the American Revolution, popular opinion in Connecticut began to turn against slavery. In 1784 the state legislature passed a policy of gradual emancipation, which legally required slaveholders to free only those enslaved people born after March 1 of that year. For individuals like Dolphin, Zillah and Peter, this meant that their freedom depended on the goodwill of their owners. In fact, Dolphin and his family were emancipated in 1788, and they chose an appropriate surname, “Freedom,” to celebrate their new status.” 

Dolphin bought 3 acres of land on the Canaan Mountain road in 1792, and leased a lot on the Village Green for the cost of 20 pounds and one peppercorn, annually. He increased the 3-acre farm, ultimately to 40 acres, and it bordered a pond that came to be known as Dolphin Pond and remains so today.

Photo of Dolphin Pond by Bruce Frisch, published on Norfolknow.org

Quoting again from Ryan Bachman, Dolphin, “had experienced life in the community as both the literal property of others and as a property owner himself.” Dolphin died in 1801, Zillah having died several months prior.

Further information about the family is included in 1744-1900 History of Norfolk Litchfield County, Connecticut by Theron Wilmot Crissey (Massachusetts Publishing Company, 1900). Quite wonderfully, History of Norfolk also includes a photo portrait of Aunt Bilhah, as she was called.

Portrait of Bilhah Freedom, Jane's mother, from 1744-1900 History of Norfolk Litchfield County, Connecticut by Theron Wilmot Crissey (1900)

Photos of Bilhah Freedom's gravestone

Along with many other sources, there is information about the Connecticut history of the family in an article entitled, Of African and Princely descent: Norfolk’s Black History, Norfolk Historical Society, 2010

After Jane died, the sampler was owned by her brother, John Freedom (1823-1903). He married, as his second wife, Emma Louisa Jackson (1838-1917), in 1879. Her father was Rev. William Jackson (1818-1900), a Black Baptist minister and abolitionist social activist who extended his advocacy beyond words to action. In addition to pastoring successful churches, he was regarded as a leader in his Philadelphia, Pennsylvania and New Bedford, Massachusetts communities and participated in rescues of freedom seekers via the Underground Railroad. Further, he was a good friend of Frederick Douglass, and an officer and chaplain on the front during the Civil War.

The sampler then descended to John and Emma’s daughter, Flossie May Freedom. It remained in the family, ultimately to descendants who became stewards of Jane’s sampler and its story. Their goal was to see the sampler in the collection of a major American museum. It has recently been sold to the Bayou Bend Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, where it has joined other significant objects made by people of color.

A very few samplers offer not only excellent needlework, exceptional composition and strong aesthetic appeal, but a rich and compelling social history as well. This sampler, a “View of Warton’s Inn” by Hannah Sophia Pidgeon, is one of those. Hannah worked this outstanding sampler, depicting on it a very large and very detailed portrait of Wharton’s Inn [View of Warton’s Inn], the 18^th century country seat of Joseph Wharton which was located at what is now 5^th Street and Washington Avenue in South Philadelphia.

This grand and important house, called Walnut Grove in the period, was built on a large tract of land circa 1735 as a country home for Joseph Wharton (1708-1776), noted Quaker merchant of Philadelphia and of the esteemed Wharton family. Upon the British occupation of Philadelphia in 1777, the house was seized and then used by royal officers. It must have been thought to be the perfect setting for the Mischianza, the extravagant and lavish celebration given by the British to honor General Sir William Howe, which took place at this house and on its grounds, extending east to the Delaware River. The Mischianza was an extravagant celebration that took place on May 18, 1778 in honor of the retirement of General Howe, commander-in-chief of the British military in America. The day began with a sailing regatta on the Delaware River, included a 17-gun salute from British Warships, continued with a parade, a jousting tournament and culminated with a ball in the Wharton home and fireworks.

The Wharton family regained occupation of the property and after Joseph Wharton’s death, the house and some of the land were inherited by his son, Isaac Wharton and then to his son, Thomas Wharton. By 1823, it was left to the “Guardians of the Poor of the City, Southwark and the Northern Liberties.” The mansion was used for other purposes as well, including a school house, and was demolished in 1862 to build a more spacious school.

Hannah was born on May 11, 1803 and made this sampler when she was just ten years old. She lived nearby the Wharton property and depicted the house in a highly detailed fashion with every brick designated and all its heavily mullioned windows accounted for. 

Interestingly, she worked another sampler, also in 1813, and this was recorded in the 1921 publication, American Samplers by Bolton & Coe (Boston, The Massachusetts Society of the. Colonial Dames of America). It was noted in that book that Hannah had lived at 5^th Street below Washington Ave and that the residence was nearby the then location of Wharton School.

Her parents were Christopher and Margaret Pidgeon, who were married at Old St. Paul’s Church, Philadelphia in 1791. Christopher Pidgeon (1768-1819) was a cabinetmaker working at 122 S. 2^nd Street, noted in a city directory of 1793 and near 2^nd & Catherine Streets in 1798 and 1799. He served in the War of 1812 as a private in the 1^st Regiment Artillery of Pennsylvania. Hannah married Samuel M. Welsh, a sea captain who was born in New Jersey circa 1812. They remained in Philadelphia and had four daughters. Hannah died on February 24, 1894. 

This highly appealing sampler displays the impressive Wharton house and lawn in a delightfully folky representation. It includes two female figures and a dog on the fenced-in front lawn, comingling with small conifers. Two larger trees, a well pump and outbuildings flank the scene. The visual activity of this comprehensive view is well balanced by the space Miss Pidgeon provides around the roofline, and her inscription. A classic border and a pair of flowers complete her work. The care that Hannah lavished onto her sampler and the story of the Wharton house are wonderful indications that this house was held in high regard to both ranking officers and to young schoolgirls, British and Americans alike. 

For much of the nineteenth century, whaling was one of America ’s major global industries. New England dominated whaling worldwide, with New Bedford its epicenter. The New Bedford Whaling Museum , with the world’s largest and most comprehensive collection related to whales and whaling, has been interpreting the history of whaling and its interrelated social and economic history since 1903. A new exhibition at the museum, entitled Needle/Work: Art, Craft, and Industry in a Port City, 1800–1930, provides an opportunity to explore, for the first time, the interrelationship of the whaling industry and needlework; domestic and commercial, utilitarian and decorative. It crafts a new understanding of how and where the worlds of consumption and production in the needle arts and trades overlapped and interconnected. In particular, it illustrates that the presumed distinctions between male and female practices were not always clear cut. From accomplishment and pastime to outwork and industry, this exhibition examines the roles that working with a needle played in the social, economic, and cultural lives of New Bedford ’s men and women during the preeminence of the whaling industry.

Why did needlework thrive here? From necessity and opportunity. Before consumer goods were mass-produced, young girls helped their mothers to sew and knit for the household. Men and women with needle skills stitched the sails that powered ships across the sea and crafted sailors’ clothing. A sailor’s skill with a needle was an important test of seamanship, and even inexperienced whalemen learned to make and mend for themselves. Whaling’s business elite patronized fine dressmaking, tailoring, and millinery shops. The wives and daughters of whaling entrepreneurs had the money and leisure to cultivate ornamental, as well as more common utilitarian skills. Whaling generated capital that funded new ventures, some in the needle trades, moving workers from home or cottage industries to factories. Immigrants to New Bedford brought their own traditional needlework skills, and found new employment opportunities. At the same time, leisure-time needlework became a symbol of refinement and gentility for a growing middle class, and a means of creative expression that cut across class lines.

Despite the community’s substantial Quaker population, fewer than a dozen of the known New Bedford samplers are associated with Quaker families and none of the samplers—plain or fancy—conforms to the style of cross-stitch samplers made at Quaker schools such as Westtown Boarding School in Chester County , Pennsylvania , or Nine Partners’ Boarding School in Dutchess County , New York . Only a handful of New Bedford samplers have any affinity at all with the Quaker style. One was completed in 1826 by Welthen S. Taber, whose family were members of the Society of Friends early in the Town’s history (fig. 1). Welthen’s third row of uppercase alphabets exemplifies the heavy Roman case lettering favored in Quaker schools. However, her crenellated border of strawberries is a fashionable addition found on samplers throughout antebellum America .

The New Bedford Academy , the first school in the town known to have taken girls was organized not by the Friends but by Congregationalists. Organized in 1797 by New Bedford merchants who lived on the Fairhaven side of the Acushnet River , the two-story school was completed in 1799; the first classes were held in 1800. Needlework and embroidery were not included in the basic tuition but were available for an additional charge. In 1812 Fairhaven was officially created as a separate town, and in May of that year the New Bedford Academy officially changed its name to Fairhaven Academy . In 1814, support for the school began to decline, likely because the region suffered heavy economic losses during the War of 1812. By 1816 the school was apparently no longer in operation; in August of that year the academy building was rented. It was sold at auction in 1841. Rebecca Nye was one of the first students to complete a sampler at the school after it changed its name to Fairhaven Academy in 1812. (fig. 2). Interestingly, she was already an adult of twenty-four and still living at home when she completed her embroidery.

In 1826 Mary Ann Jenney completed the only known mourning style sampler known from New Bedford or Fairhaven (fig. 3). It is unusual in not being dedicated to a particular person. Mary may have been unwell and had herself in mind, for she died just four years after completing the embroidery. The Jenneys were members of the Fairhaven Congregational Church.

Kathleen Staples
Consulting Curator
Madelyn Shaw
Vice-President of Collections and Exhibitions
New Bedford Whaling Museum
18 Johnny Cake Hill
New Bedford , MA 02740
508-997-0046
www.whalingmuseum.org

The exhibition runs through December 31, 2008; please visit their website for further information.

A sampler catalog is available from the museum for $19.95.

Figure 1.
Sampler by Welthen Taber (1817–1907), age 9
New Bedford , dated September 29, 1826
Silk thread; linen ground of 28 x 29 threads per in.
1992.47; Old Dartmouth Historical Society purchase
Photograph by Herb Andrew

Figure 2.
Sampler by Rebecca Nye (1788–1867)
Fair Haven Academy , dated 1812
Silk thread; linen ground of 29 x 30 threads per in.
1999.36.108; Gift of Anne Fitch
Photograph by Herb Andrew

Figure 3.
Sampler by Mary Ann Jenney (1815–1830), age 10
Fairhaven , dated 1826
Two-ply and crinkled silk threads; linen ground of 29 x 30 threads per in.
2005.50.1; Old Dartmouth Historical Society purchase
Photograph by Herb Andrew

In the fall of 2011, an outstanding, fully-worked sampler made by Rachel Breck, age 11, circa 1803 came to light. Its very close relationship to others made by girls from Northampton, Massachusetts was immediately evident; specifically one published in Mary Jaene Edmond’s Samplers & Samplermakers An American Schoolgirl Art 1700-1850 (by Bathsheba Copeland, dated 1805, figure 15). The Breck sampler had been just outside of Philadelphia, owned privately by the niece of a highly regarded dealer of books and manuscripts, Richard Wormser. His niece inherited the sampler upon his death in 1975. When we researched further on behalf of the owner, we realized that Rachel Breck’s needlework skills were already known to many in the field. An article by Betty Ring, “New England Heraldic Needlework of the Neoclassical Period,” (The Magazine Antiques, October, 1993) illustrates an excellent silk embroidery entitled, “Charity,” worked by the same Rachel Breck. This has been in the collection of the National Museum of American History since 1951 when it was donated by collectors. Happily, Rachel’s sampler is now in the same museum and it helps us all to know more about the precise date of “Charity,” which has long been a bit cloudy, in that two different years are part of family notations on the backboard of the frame: 1803 and 1810. It can now be assumed that the sampler was made in 1803 and the silk embroidery in 1810. We are pleased to feature the article below that appeared in “O Say Can You See,” the blog for the Smithsonian’s museum site, written by museum volunteer and researcher, Sheryl De Jong, who was instrumental in reuniting these two important pieces.
 

A mystery solved in the textile collection

The Textile Collection at the National Museum of American History contains an embroidered picture of Charity based on a mezzotint engraving by P. Stampa. It was embroidered by Rachel Breck who was born July 22, 1792, to Joseph Hunt (1766-1801) and Abigail Kingsley (c1766 – 1846) Breck of Northampton, Massachusetts.

“Charity,” stitched by Rachel Breck, 22 in x 18 in, TE*E388172, Image No. 81-5200

On the backboard of the frame is an inscription hand-written in ink: “Worked by Rachel Breck Hooker in 1810 in the 18th year of her age.” The date is then amended to 1803 and the age to 11, in pencil. The liner is backed with grey rag paper bearing the ink inscription: “Wrought by Mrs. Rachel Breck Hooker in 1810, the 18th year of her age.”

The mystery behind the two possible dates was recently solved when the museum acquired a sampler made by Rachel Breck at age 11. Her sampler is nearly identical to ones by Bathsheba Copeland and Emily Parsons, also from Northampton, Massachusetts. The uniqueness of these samplers is the long satin stitches completely covering the background.

Rachel Breck’s sampler, 12 ¾ in x 13 ¾ in. Catalogue No. 2011.0256.01, Image No. AHB2012q00302

It was not uncommon for a young girl to make a sampler and then go on to make a more difficult silk embroidered picture. Rachel probably began her education in Northampton, where she made her sampler. She went on to receive more schooling at the Deerfield Academy in Deerfield, Massachusetts, approximately 17 miles north of Northampton. She attended three 12-week sessions beginning April 11, 1806. It is not known if she completed any needlework while at the Academy.

Her silk embroidered picture is nearly identical to one embroidered by Sarah Marshall now in the collection of the DAR Museum, that came with the information that it was stitched at the Misses Patten school in Hartford, Connecticut. Presumably her parents wanted to further her education and sent her at the age of 18 to attend school inHartford. A wide range of subjects were taught at the Misses Patten’s School; the curriculum included “Latin, Greek, English, & French languages, grammatically – mercantile and common arithmetic – book-keeping – geography, with the use of globes and maps – lectures in astronomy and natural philosophy, writing, composition, drawing, painting, embroidery filligre [sic] & other ornamental work.”

In 1819 Rachel married George Hooker who was born in 1798 to John and Sarah (Dwight) Hooker of Northampton. He went to Yale, class of 1814, and was a physician who resided in Longmeadow, Massachusetts. They had eight children born between 1820 and 1833. Rachel died in 1879.

It is not known when her embroideries were separated, but her silk embroidered piece was purchased by collectors Dr. and Mrs. Arthur Greenwood who donated it to theUnited Sates National Museumin 1951. Her sampler was purchased by collector Richard Wormser (1898-1975) and recently acquired by the museum.

The two comprise the first example in the Textile Collection of a young girl’s earlier sampler and her later more technically advanced silk embroidery. Rachel Breck’s embroideries have once again been reunited.

There are 137 American samplers in the Textile Collection. The first was donated in 1886, the Margaret Dinsmoor sampler. The earliest dated sampler in the collection was made in 1735 by Lydia Dickman of Boston, Massachusetts. 51 samplers from the collection can be seen on our website. Watch for more to be added in the near future.

Sheryl De Jong is a volunteer in the Division of Home and Community Life’s Textile Collection at the National Museum of American History.

Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a rose by and by.
Oliver Wendell Holmes

As long as I can remember, I have been drawn to things historical. As a child I imagined myself becoming an archaeologist. Whilst that didn’t happen, my preoccupation with the past manifested itself in other ways including my love of genealogical research and of collecting hand-made antiques – those often simple or primitive one-of-a-kind survivors that are a reflection of their makers’ creative efforts. Those two passions intersect in the rare instances when I have been able to acquire a treasured antique of Irish origin.  

Owing at least in part to centuries of economic, religious and societal oppression experienced by the people of Ireland, Irish antiques are not routinely found at public sale in large numbers. Fortunately, the long-standing commitment of the Irish people to historic preservation allows us to see Irish antiques in museums and other public venues. In the open market, Irish antiques with unquestionable provenance such as hallmarked Irish silver or jewelry command understandably high prices when available. My interest doesn’t lie in those things. I am drawn to the things that represent the remnants of the lives of the majority of Irish who were our ancestors. Those things, often called “folk art” in the antiques trade, are scarce due to their fragile nature or purely utilitarian purpose but, when found, offer us the opportunity to connect with our Irish past in a more personal way. If we are so fortunate as to be able to identify the maker or source of such an object, its resonance is amplified and the connection made even more meaningful and informative.

Jane dated her sampler April 18, 1818 in addition to embroidering her name and location: “Colerain,” giving us key information about her identity. Now nearly two centuries old and quite faded, Jane’s needlework on linen measures about 8 by 12 inches and includes rows of various practice stitches at the top and also separating the lines of alphabet letters, numbers and verse. As is not uncommon with schoolgirl samplers, Jane’s work has an error: a misspelling of the word “LORD” as “LOLD.” No matter that. We all know what little Jane meant to say.

My basic historical and genealogical research revealed that Coleraine was both a town and a barony in then County Londonderry and a locale well-known for its linen production and exports as well as for the salmon harvested from the River Bann and dispatched via ship to Liverpool, Glasgow and beyond. Coleraine was a long-time area of residence for a number of Gage families, particularly in the parishes of Killowen, Dunhoe, Macosquin and Aghadowey. In addition to the Gage descendants who remained in Ireland, I found two lines, one Canadian and one in the southern U.S. that each traces its lineage back to the Gages of Coleraine. As anyone doing genealogical research knows, following male surname descent, while not necessarily easy, presents less of a challenge than searching the weeds for the females of the same family. In Jane’s case, I can say that the Christian name “Jane” is found in multiple generations of the Gage family in the 18^th and 19^th centuries. I also found an 1859 Griffith’s Valuation record for the Town of Coleraine, Parish of Killowen, listing a Jane Gage as the occupier of a house and yard on Killowen Street, and as the lessor of a house on an adjacent property. Could that be the same Jane Gage who wrought her sampler there forty years earlier? Since I acquired Jane’s sampler in the U.S., it could be just as likely that she was among the Gages who emigrated to North America in the 1800s. The important thing is that 195 years later, this small piece of Jane remains as a reminder of a young Ulstergirl and a life that can still pique our curiosity and imagination. 

Part two – Eliza Woods of Pettigo

I cannot count my day complete, ‘til needle, thread, and fabric meet. Unknown

Eliza Woods – “. . . there is laid up for me a crown which cannot fade”

Eliza Woods’s needlework tells us that she was 12 years old and a student at the Pettigo School when she wrought her sampler. Thankfully, and perhaps as an afterthought, Eliza squeezed in the year she completed her sampler (1849) at the lower right edge of the piece. That key item of information in combination with her age points to her having been born in 1837 or 1836.

Eliza’s sampler, measuring about 7 by 11.5 inches and still bright and without holes, soiling or water-stains, must have remained a treasured item as it passed through the hands of a succession of owners over the last 164 years. The rows of alphabet letters and numbers bordered with geometric elements showcase her proficiency in embroidering a variety of stitch types and sizes with delicate precision. The sampler is further ornamented with an urn on which a butterfly had alighted (upside down) along with a swan, small black bird and a crown (most likely a reference to the English monarchy). Below that is the following religious verse:

“Henceforth there is laid up for me a crown which cannot fade; the righteous judge at that great day shall place it on my head.”

According to the 1846 edition of Slater’s Commercial Directory of Ireland, Pettigo was “a small market town” near Lower Lough Erne sitting partially in County Donegal and partly in County Fermanagh with a “small stream” dividing the little town and the two counties. The description went on to call the local countryside “romantic and picturesque” while saying that the town had very little trade going on but for that connected to fairs and the local market. Local religious institutions included Roman Catholic, Presbyterian, Wesleyan Methodist, Primitive Methodist and what was simply referred to as the Parish Church (presumably Church of Ireland). Slater’s listed a resident surgeon, land surveyor, constable and local tradespeople including a carpenter, butcher, saddler, ironmonger, baker, and a cooper along with multiple blacksmiths, grocers, drapers, shoemakers and tailors. Pettigo also had an active mill powered by a local waterfall.

In the mid-19^th century Pettigo was also home to two schools, the Parochial School under the direction of James Copeland and Mary Copeland, listed as the master and mistress of that school, and the National School where John McAffery served as master. Eliza worked her sampler while a student at one of those schools.  The Griffith’s Valuation of 1857 listed a James Woods living on Mill Streetin Pettigo, a tenant renting house and yard from the Leslie family, prominent owners of large land holdings in the area. There is also a James Woods interred in the Templecarne Graveyard in Pettigo, having died there at the age of 83 in 1889, very possibly the same man.  Could James have been Eliza’s father or other family member? I cannot say.

As much as I would like to be able to answer that question, that’s not what I think about when I look at Eliza’s lovely 1849 sampler. Each time I admire her work, I wonder that such a beautiful thing was lovingly and painstakingly created at a time when Ireland was in the grip of the tragic Great Famine and I think how fortunate Eliza must have been as compared to so many other Irish children who, with their dispossessed and starving families, were among hundreds of inmates at one of the nearby Poor Law Union Workhouses in Donegal at the very same time. 

Part three – Anne Walpole of Clonmel 

All my scattering moments are taken up with my needle.
Ellen Birdseye Wheaton– 1851

IN STITCHES: Unraveling Their Stories will open December 2, 2011 at the Chester County Historical Society in West Chester, PA, and run through September 7, 2012. The exhibit will feature large portions of the needlework collection of the historical society as well as that of nearby Westtown School, offering visitors a rare opportunity to view many samplers and other embroidered items made by girls in Chester County and the surrounding area over 200 years ago. While visually pleasing and technically interesting, these works by hand also serve as documents from which one can begin to tell the maker’s story.

The Chester County Historical Society has been collecting objects and manuscripts since 1893, and its textile collection now includes 270 samplers that range in date from the mid-1700s through the late 1800s, with most made between 1770 and 1840. The variety of samplers in the collection reflects the trends of the region and sampler making in general, including multi-colored silk embroidery on linen arranged in bands of alphabets with meandering borders and floral motifs, samplers that document the maker and her family, and large decorative pastoral scenes with a mélange of sheep, rabbits, flowers and trees. A few are whitework that feature needle lace. Westtown School samplers are well represented in the CCHS collection, along with a few from other local schools about which less is known.

Westtown School (still in operation today) was founded in Chester County in 1799 by the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends (Quakers), and the first printed broadside for parents intending to send their children to Westtown states that girls are to bring with them “…a pair of Scissors, Thread-case, and Thimble, Work-bag, and some plain sewing or knitting to begin with…”  The education at Westtown was to be useful and practical, thus sewing would have a part in the curriculum along with reading, writing, cyphering and other studies. Westtown students produced a great body of needlework, most of which is styled after samplers made in Quaker schools in England such as Ackworth (founded in 1779) and York (opened in 1785). These styles include darning, marking (some with the distinctive bellflower cut corner border found on Ackworth samplers), extracts (a verse or verses stitched in an undulating oval vine with leaves), and more stylized samplers with geometric medallions often accompanied by animal and floral motifs. The needlework collection at Westtown School includes over 130 flat samplers and nine embroidered silk globes (known only to have been made at Westtown), plus other items sewn or knitted by hand such as pin cushions, sewing bags and stockings. The collection also includes a number of samplers made by Westtown students while not in attendance at the school and others with no direct connection to Westtown, offering a contrast to the Quaker styles for which the school is known. Together, the Chester County Historical Society and Westtown School needlework collections are a valuable resource for a better understanding of the lives of these young women in a particular time and place.

Sarah Sharpless (1788-1836) came to Westtown when it opened in May 1799, entering from Burlington, New Jersey, where she lived with Samuel Emlen after the death of both her parents, Aaron (1756-1798) and Mary (Ellwood) Sharpless (1764-1797).  Sarah’s 1801 marking sampler includes the cut corner bellflower border found on Ackworth School samplers, along with the Roman style alphabet favored by Quaker schools. Westtown’s needlework collection also includes a sampler made by Sarah’s mother in 1773. (Westtown School)

Zillah Harry Monks made this sampler in 1829 in the Kennett area of Chester County, PA. Silk thread on linen includes cross stitch, queen’s stitch, Irish stitch and rice stitch. Several alphabets are arranged in bands above the floral motifs typical of ChesterCounty needlework. Arranged among these motifs are the initials of Zillah’s family members, including her parents John (d. 1847) and his second wife Zillah (Harry) Monks (1779 – 1838). The sampler maker was one of seven siblings with these parents. Three of her siblings were deceased before the sampler was started, but are included in this family record in black cross stitch. (CCHS)

In 1809 Martha Vastine (1798 – 1873) of Coatesville created this picture with satin stitch, outline stitch, french knots and hand painting. She was the daughter of Benjamin (d. 1820) and Dorothy (c. 1775 – 1855) Vastine. Benjamin operated a store and tavern at “the Sign of the Golden Eagle” on the Lancaster Pike in EastCalnTownship. Martha was married twice, first to Joseph I. Miller (c. 1790 – 1827) and then to Joel B. Miller (1808 – 1874). Two years after the pictorial sampler was finished, Martha made a less elaborate piece that includes floral motifs often found on local samplers. (CCHS)

      Mary Louisa Thomas (1819 – 1855) employed a wide variety of needlework stitches to create this elaborate pictorial sampler in 1832. She also included her family members in the cartouche. Her parents were Jesse and Alice (Levis) Thomas of East Goshen Township, ChesterCounty. Her brother and sisters were Gulielma Maria, Hannah Levis, and Eli Thomas. Hannah and Eli died before the sampler was completed and the black stitching around their names denotes that. None of the siblings, including the maker, lived beyond age 41. Gulielma was the only one who married. Mary attended WesttownSchool from October 1835 to February 1836. This sampler is typical of those made by girls who studied with Elizabeth Passmore, a teacher in EastGoshenTownship. (CCHS)

Mary Gibson Hill was born in 1785 to William and Anna (Gibson) Hill of Darby, PA, and she was admitted to Westtown in July 1799. That year – significant as Westtown’s first - is stitched along the left border of Mary’s sampler. Note her inscription of the school as WestTown; several variations are found on Westtown samplers including WestTown, West-Town, West-town and Weston, all used interchangeably until the mid-19^th century when the school settled on the spelling used today. The half medallions that comprise the border were drawn from AckworthSchool samplers, as were the floral motifs, facing birds, gliding swan and squirrel included by Mary. The sets of initials placed throughout the sampler are those of Mary’s Westtown classmates and teachers, documented in records in the school’s archives. (Owned jointly by CCHS and Westtown School)

Girls with advanced needlework skills at Westtown may have made embroidered silk globes (left, silk on silk with watercolor and ink; Westtown School) or Views of the Boarding School (right, silk on linen with watercolor; Westtown School). This view of the school’s original building was stitched by an unknown girl sometime before 1804 when the committee with oversight of the school deemed these needlework views “superfluous” and the exercise of making them contrary to the “original design of the Institution.” Thus, very few were made by students at Westtown, but the school building is depicted on many other known samplers, including a group produced in Burlington County, New Jersey (Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework 1650-1850, volume II, 1993, p. 476-77).

Making the globe, however, was a very useful exercise that enhanced both one’s needlework skill and knowledge of geography, a subject included in the girls’ curriculum. Upon completion, the student had a globe for reference. Judith Tyner, professor of Geography at California State University Long Beach, who has studied needlework maps and globes, suggests the Westtown silk globes are among the earliest American-made globes of any kind. (Judith Tyner, The World in Silk: Embroidered Globes of Westtown School, presented at the Annual Meeting of The Association of American Geographers, 1993). Westtown girls also studied astronomy and made similar silk globes featuring the constellations. This terrestrial globe is attributed to Susan Ecroyd (1825-1878) who attended Westtown from October 1839 to April 1841. She was the daughter of Henry and Catherine (Whitacre) Ecroyd of Muncy, PA.

For further information about IN STITCHES: Unraveling Their Stories, including gallery hours and special programs, contact the Chester County Historical Society at 610-692-4800 or ChesterCoHistorical.org.

Discovery | By Eleanor H. Gustafson

Endnotes: African American schoolgirl embroidery

"Amy is a treasure," Linda Eaton, curator of textiles at the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, said to me referring to Amy Finkel, the Philadelphia needlework dealer, who recently brought a rare Berlin work picture stitched by a black American schoolgirl to her attention. Knowing that Eaton has long felt that Winterthur's collection does not adequately represent the cultural diversity that existed in this country in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries, she was the first person Finkel approached with the needlework, stitched by Olevia Rebecca Parker in Philadelphia. "I was thrilled," says Eaton, "and the entire acquisitions committee was behind it 100 per cent." Doubling her delight, at the same time Bill and Joyce Subjack of Neverbird Antiques in Surry, Virginia, needlework specialists and collectors themselves, offered her a Berlin work picture stitched by Rachel Ann Lee at the Oblate Sisters of Providence School for Colored Girls in Baltimore in 1846, and Winterthur acquired it as well.

Image: Berlin work picture by Olevia Rebecca Parker (later Mrs. Joseph Brister; c. 1838-c. 1882), Lombard Street School, Philadelphia, 1852. Winterthur Museum, Delaware
 

It is hard to overstate the significance of these needlework pictures. The huge body of scholarship about American schoolgirl needlework documents the many teachers and schools that offered instruction in this "accomplishment" to white girls, but only in recent years have scholars unearthed evidence of a small number of schools where decorative needlework was also taught to black girls. The best known were in Baltimore, most particularly the schools run by the Oblates, well documented by Gloria Seaman Allen in the pages of this magazine in April 2004 (where Rachel Lee's work was illustrated and discussed) and in her book, A Maryland Sampling: Girlhood Embroidery, 1738-1860 (2007). Besides the surviving examples from the Baltimore schools, between them Eaton and Finkel could think of only a handful: one sampler in a private collection worked by a black girl at a school in Connecticut, a very plain marking sampler done by a black girl in Ohio, and one worked at the Convent of Mount Carmel established in New Orleans in 1838 to educate young girls of color. Allen reminded me of one other that she had footnoted in her 2004 article­-a marking sampler in the Subjacks' collection, worked at a school in Williamsburgh (now part of Brooklyn), New York, probably in the 1850s. And Kathleen Staples and Kimberly Ivey have found that southern black girls received needlework instruction, though no documented examples have been identified.

With the discovery of Olevia Parker's work, the Lombard Street School in Philadelphia can be added to the list of schools where decorative needlework was taught to blacks. Finkel's research revealed that the school originally educated white children, but about 1828 they were transferred to a new building and African Americans were enrolled at the old building on Sixth and Lombard—actually just five short blocks from Finkel's shop.

Olevia Parker was about fourteen when she stitched the picture, the sentimental subject of which is typical of the Berlin work patterns popular in the middle of the nineteenth century. Both Eaton and Allen remarked on the fact that here, as in surviving examples from the Oblate schools, the teachers clearly did not adapt the pattern to reflect their students' skin color—another factor complicating the identification of needlework by black girls.

By 1860 Olevia had married Joseph Brister, an African American dentist in Philadelphia. Their eldest son, James (1858-1916), was the first black to earn a degree from the University of Pennsylvania, from which he graduated in 1881, a dentist like his father. (Today the university's James Brister Society rewards students of color for their leadership and achievements.)

How valuable is an African American provenance to such a work? Neither Eaton nor Finkel would reveal the price paid, but Berlin work pictures signed and dated by white girls can be found for under a thousand dollars. By contrast, one stitched by the African American Samaria Gaines at the Oblates' school in 1858 and now in the Baltimore Museum of Art, was listed in Finkel's Spring 2004 catalogue for twenty-four thousand dollars.

Below are the remarks prepared by Amy Finkel that add further to the information regarding the Lombard Street School and the samplermaker. Some of this information may duplicate the article above.

Olevia Rebecca Parker, Lombard Street School Philadelphia, 1852 The Lombard Street School, a public school located on Sixth Street near Lombard Street, educated Philadelphia African American students for many years, beginning approximately in 1828. Prior to that date, the school educated white children, who were then transferred to a new building on Locust Street. The Pennsylvania Abolition Society, founded in 1775, amended its mission in 1787 to work towards “improving the Condition of the African Race” and the Society was highly instrumental in the continuation of the Lombard Street School. Civic leaders, both black and white, supported the Lombard Street School and the continued public education of African American students.

There are no other samplers known to have been made at this school, nor are there any other documented African American samplers made in Philadelphia. This sampler obviously reflects the popular style of mainstream needlework of the early 1850s and the teachers had not adapted or altered the subject: A Berlin pattern of two girls collecting firewood with their dog is centered within four floral corner elements. Most of the needlework is cross-stitch but the faces and heads of the two girls are worked in a tighter tent-stitch.

Much information can be found regarding the samplermaker, Olivia (Olevia) Rebecca Parker (circa 1838 - circa 1882), an African American who lived her life in Philadelphia. She was the daughter of Adam and Olivia Parker; both of her parents were born circa 1801 in Maryland and lived much of their lives in Philadelphia. The 1850 census shows the family, consisting of Adam, Olivia and five children (Thomas, Elizabeth, Rebecca (aka Olivia Rebecca), George and Theophilus) living in the Southwark Ward. Both Adam and his eldest child Thomas indicated that they were waiters. Olivia Rebecca Parker would have been age 14 in 1852 when she attended the Lombard Street School and worked this sampler. By 1860, according to that census, Olivia was married to an African American dentist, Joseph Brister (born in Pennsylvania, circa 1835) they became the parents of two children, Olivia, age 3 and James, age 1. The family lived with Olivia Rebecca Parker Brister’s mother and siblings, and their occupations were listed as seamstress, barber and apprentice shoemaker. Both the 1870 and 1880 census show the family as it continues to grow; by 1880 their eldest daughter, Olivia Brister, age 23, was a teacher.

Most interestingly, their eldest son, James (1858-1916) attended the University of Pennsylvania where, in 1881, he received a degree in the school of dentistry and was the first African American to earn a Penn degree. The James Brister Society of the University of Pennsylvania, an active and highly respected group, was named in his honor and rewards students of color for their leadership and achievements. The Penn archives contain much information about the Brister family, and document that Olivia’s husband was a member of the Banneker Institute and civic associations that focused on the social rights and general conditions of Philadelphia’s substantial African American community. The Bristers lived in the area of Lombard and Pine Streets between Sixth and Tenth Streets, a predominantly African American neighborhood. A book by the noted 19th century African American sociologist, W. E. B. DuBois, entitled The Philadelphia Negro: A Social Study, originally published in 1899 by the University of Pennsylvania Press (reprinted in 1996 by the same), is a classic work which documents this community and the Lombard Street School.

Olivia Rebecca Parker Brister died, according to the University of Pennsylvania Archives, in the early 1880s. Her son James was practicing dentistry along with his father at 844 Lombard Street in 1890; however shortly after that James removed to Chicago and spent the rest of his life in Illinois, a well-respected dentist and community leader.

The sampler seems to have remained in the Philadelphia area but not within the family. It is in its original gold leaf frame.

The Delaware Schoolgirl Sampler project is a newly funded collaborative effort designed to locate, document, interpret, disseminate, and promote awareness of historic schoolgirl samplers and related girlhood embroideries stitched in Delaware or residing in Delaware’s public and private collections. The project is funded, in part, by a grant from the Delaware Humanities Forum to the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware, and is the most recent initiative of the Sampler Archive Project (http://samplerarchive.org).

Project activities in Delaware include the following:

1. Statewide Survey. We are in the process of conducting a statewide survey of Delaware’s cultural and heritage organizations to locate American girlhood samplers and related embroideries in their collections. To date we have located more than 400 pieces of schoolgirl needlework spread across the state in museums, historical societies, libraries, and private collections. All those documented as American will be registered and photographed for inclusion in the Sampler Archive.

2. Sampler ID Days. We will conduct at least three Sampler Identification and Documentation Days to locate and document samplers and related schoolgirl embroideries in private collections or held as family heirlooms. Three Sampler ID Days open to the public have been scheduled, one in each of Delaware’s three counties. The Sampler ID Days are scheduled for 10:00 am to 4:00 pm at the following locations:

June 8 – Delaware Historical Society in Wilmington
June 15 – Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover
July 18 – Lewes Historical Society in Lewes

3. Delaware Sampler Symposium. On March 22, 2014 we will hold a free one day symposium at the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover.  Featured speakers will present on various topics related to schoolgirl needlework in Delaware, with an emphasis on sharing what has been learned from the Statewide Survey and the Sampler ID Days. The Delaware Sampler Symposium will provide the sampler loving community with its first peak at newly uncovered samplers from Delaware and the schools attended by the girls who made them. Accompanying the symposium will be one or two days of needlework classes and field trips designed to promote understanding of Delaware’s sampler making traditions, and provide access to some of Delaware’s most extensive sampler collections. So save the dates March 21-23, 2014!

Augmenting the information gained from these activities is the Sampler Archive Project’s ongoing national survey of schools and teachers where needlework was taught to girls and young women in the 17^th, 18^th and 19^th centuries. Gathering data from sampler inscriptions, contemporary newspaper ads, and local published histories, we have more than 70 unique entries for Delaware in the American Female Schools and Teachers Database. More than half provide information about schools or teachers in Wilmington, including both the oldest in the list (1748) and the most recent (1881). However, there are also entries for schools and teachers in all three Delaware counties; and for towns and cities across the state including New Castle, Delaware City, Newark, Middletown, Smyrna, Camden, Talleyville, Dover, and Lewes. 

Some of the schools were very short lived, but are represented by a healthy number of samplers. For example, around the year 1800 members of the Duck Creek Meeting of the Religious Society of Friends opened the Female Southern Boarding School at Duck Creek Crossing (now Smyrna) Delaware. Although the school only lasted about five years, there is a fairly large group of samplers, most with distinctively Quaker motifs, all of which have the school’s name stitched across the top. Fourteen samplers are known to date, residing in twelve different collections, and stitched using three different design layouts. The most popular style of the three includes gracefully stitched sophisticated poems of 12 to 16 lines in length, flanked by naturalistic sprays of flowers and botanical borders. The earliest known sampler from this school was stitched in 1801 and appears to be unique in its format (image included).

Other schools are known to have existed but, to date, no samplers have been located that can be tied to the school. For example, in New Castle there were at least two schools that sought to provide education to girls from impoverished families – the New Castle Charity School (opened in 1817) and the Female Free School (opened in 1823). Both advertized in local newspapers and both included needlework in the curriculum, as well as basic instruction in reading and writing. To date, no samplers have yet been associated with either of these schools – but samplers by former students must certainly exist. Missing also is information about samplers stitched by African American girls living in Delaware's antebellum Free Black communities between the 1800 and 1870: Polktown (Red Lion Hundred, New Castle County), St. Jones Neck (East Dover Hundred, Kent County), Lewes and Belltown (both in Lewes and Rehoboth Hundred) and West Laurel (Little Creek Hundred, Sussex County).

We anticipate that the breadth and depth of our approach to sampler location and documentation in Delaware will serve to fill these and other information gaps, lending richness to scholarship on Delaware’s sampler making traditions and expanding the sampler community’s understanding about early educational opportunities for girls of all races and economic levels. We also anticipate that this statewide effort will serve as a model for similar initiatives in other states or regions.

Through these and related activities, we will be striving to achieve the goals of the Delaware Schoolgirl Sampler project. These goals include: (a) expanding knowledge and understanding of Delaware’s schoolgirl needlework traditions; (b) increasing visibility for historic samplers and schoolgirl embroideries in Delaware’s public and private collections; (c) increasing the number of objects from Delaware in the Sampler Archive online database; and (d) disseminating scholarship about Delaware’s schoolgirl needlework instruction nationally and internationally. Included in this article are images for a sampling of Delaware samplers and other girlhood embroideries designed to convey the diversity of needlework styles and techniques.

The Delaware Schoolgirl Sampler project is supported by the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture at the University of Delaware, the University of Oregon’s Center for Advanced Technology in Education, and the Sampler Consortium, an international 1200-member organization dedicated to the study of historic samplers. Together, these organizations direct the Sampler Archive Project, a national initiative funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to create a publically accessible online database of documented information and high-resolution images of all known historic samplers and related schoolgirl embroideries stitched on what is now American territory. Under NEH funding the Sampler Archive Project is (a) establishing standards and protocols for documenting schoolgirl embroideries, (b) programming a sophisticated collections management database to house information and images for all documented samplers, (c) collaborating with four pilot sites to develop and implement efficient and reliable strategies for sampler documentation, and (d) actively disseminating information about the Sampler Archive through presentations, publications, and interdisciplinary professional and social networks at local and national levels. By focusing intently on a statewide expression of a nationally embraced form of educational and social enterprise for girls of all classes and race, the Delaware Schoolgirl Sampler project builds on and adds to the momentum already established for this historically important effort to uncover women’s identities, voices, and stories. It is anticipated that the Sampler Archive will be available online for public use in January 2014.

Mary Orr worked this sampler in 1831 “in the 10 year of her age”
at the school of E. Norris in Brandywine Hundred, New Castle County, Delaware.
Courtesy of M. Finkel & Daughter.

Mary Roe of Frederica, Kent County, Delaware worked this sampler in 1835. A sampler with the same format, motifs, and color palette was stitched by Elizabeth Ann Townsend, also in 1835. That sampler is in the collection of the Winterthur Museum and contains an inscription on the back indicating it was executed at “Mr. Bell's School Newark Delaware", thus also documenting the origin of Mary Roe’s sampler. An 1828 announcement in the Delaware Patriot and American Watchman indicates that the Reverend Bell’s “Young Ladies’ Boarding School” was in operation for at least seven years. Photo courtesy of M. Finkel & Daughter.

Sarah Ralston Jones stitched this sampler at a school in Wilmington in 1822 when she was only eight years old. In spite of her young age,
Sarah was already a very talented needleworker, adept at working in silk, chenille, and crewel wool.
Sadly, Sarah died September 30, 1822, only five months after completing her sampler. Courtesy M. Finkel & Daughter.

Sampler stitched by Elizabeth Virdin of Kent County, Delaware in 1808.
At the time that Elizabeth stitched this sampler she was 13 years old.
Many features of this sampler are typical of needlework executed under the instruction of a Quaker teacher,
including the “Extract” and the natural looking floral motifs. Courtesy M. Finkel & Daughter.

Sarah Shields from New Castle County, Delaware, stitched this sampler some time between 1822 and 1825.
The multiple sets of initials are those of her parents, grandparents, and siblings.
The initials of her youngest two siblings, born 1825 and 1827, are not represented on the sampler,
helping to establish the time period in which the sampler was stitched. Courtesy of Cindy Steinhoff.

Katherine Wallace stitched this pictorial silk embroidery in Wilmington at Elizabeth Montgomery’s
“Ladies English sewing and drawing school”, c. 1818. The scene is entitled Hector Taking Leave of Andromache.
Courtesy of the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum, Washington, DC.
Gift of Miss M. Louise Jaquette. Photograph by Mark Gulezian/Quicksilver

Sampler stitched by an unknown girl in 1801 at the Southern Boarding School in Duck Creek Crossing,
Delaware (now Smyrna, DE). The Southern Boarding School was established about 1800
by members of the Duck Creek Monthly Meeting of the Southern Quarter. The first superintendent of the school was
James Iddings, who moved to Duck Creek Crossing in 1798 with his wife Mary, and their four children.
This is the earliest of the fourteen known samplers stitched at the school between 1801 and 1805 –
all of which are inscribed with the school’s name. Courtesy of John Chaski Antiques.

Girls in Delaware, the second-smallest state in the nation, produced about three hundred known samplers in a variety of styles between the 1740s and mid-1800s. New Castle County, the northernmost and most populated of Delaware's three counties, saw more sampler activity than the other two counties combined, with nearly two hundred known samplers. Girls who lived in Kent County in central Delaware produced nearly seventy samplers, or about one-third the number of samplers as New Castle. Rural Sussex County in the southern part of the state saw the fewest number of samplers; its girls stitched slightly fewer than forty samplers, or about one-fifth the number made in New Castle County.

Delaware Discoveries: Schoolgirl Samplers, 1750-1850, by Gloria Seaman Allen and Cynthia Shank Steinhoff, will be published later this year. The book, which is fully illustrated with photographs, documents Delaware samplers and their makers in the same manner as Dr. Allen's two earlier books did for samplers made in Maryland and the District of Columbia.

Samplers in New Castle County

Wilmington, the largest city in the state, is located in New Castle County and Philadelphia is just over thirty miles to the northeast. Girls in New Castle County had easier access to schools and materials needed for samplers than those in the two more rural counties. New Castle girls many different styles of samplers, including many complex designs. They stitched samplers instructed or influenced by Quaker teachers. A style of samplers featuring compartments for verses or initials, ornate floral designs in baskets, and intricate floral borders persisted in New Castle County from the late 1700s through the 1830s. Some made alphabet samplers or variations on them.

Quaker Influences

Margaret Nichols and Mary Starr both studied needlework with the well-known Quaker teacher, Susanna Pusey Harvey, whose students abbreviate her Brandywine School name as "B'Wine School" on samplers. The two girls had some similar elements on their samplers.

Margaret Nichol's sampler made in 1806 featured a floral border, alphabet at the top, and large floral motifs throughout the work. Two verses appear in the center and Margaret encased her name, school, and the date made in a wreath of flowers and stems. Margaret was the third daughter of four born in 1793 to Samuel Nichols and his wife, Ruth Mendenhall Nichols, who lived in Wilmington. She never married and after her parents' death, she resided with her nephew, Samuel Nichols Pusey, who operated a cotton manufacturing company at Front and Tatnall Streets in Wilmington. Margaret died in 1865 at age seventy-two and is buried with her parents and two sisters at the Wilmington Meeting burial ground.

Mary Starr completed her sampler in 1813, also under the direction of Susanna Pusey Harvey, and was likely one of Susanna's last students. It was in 1813 that Susanna married Samuel Malin and ended a teaching career that began before 1800 in Lancaster County, Pennsylvania. Three verses feature prominently on Mary's sampler, as do the names of her parents and grandparents and initials of her siblings. Mary was a daughter of Jacob Starr, a sea captain, and Tamar Tolen Starr of Wilmington. Little is know about Mary's later life.

Baskets

Three samplers represent the New Castle basket group. They are part of a group of six known samplers with very similar characteristics made between 1789 and 1795, probably in the Wilmington area, as well as an 1817 sampler with many of the same features, but a different border. While no teacher or school is mentioned on any of the samplers, it is likely that such complex samplers were made under the direction of an instructor. The common features of this group are ornate and colorful floral borders, a central basket containing more flowers, birds and butterflies, and compartments for text that can include verses, the stitcher's name, and family initials. Sarah Sheward, Agness Catherwood, and Sally Truitt stitched the three samplers representing this group.

Sarah Sheward's sampler, stitched in 1793, was discovered too late to appear in Delaware Discoveries. The central basket is small and contains a bouquet of two large flowers and several smaller buds. Sarah's name appears above the flowers with the date made below them. More flowers, two birds, and two butterflies appear on either side of the floral arrangement. She included four nearly square boxes that contain verses and family initials.

Sarah Sheward (1780-1850) was a daughter of James Sheward, a British naval physician, and Rest Perry, a Quaker from Wilmington. Sarah married George Whitelock, a Wilmington cabinetmaker, in 1805 and they had eight children. George died in 1833 after he and Sarah relocated to Baltimore, Maryland. Sarah died November 23, 1850. She still lived in Baltimore at the time of the 1850 census.

Agness Catherwood (1783-1802) stitched her 1795 sampler with two rectangular compartments holding verses. Her basket is slightly larger than Sarah Sheward's and she stitched two birds and four butterflies within the flowers. Agness opted to place her name and date made within the lower rectangle, and her border included more elaborate flowers and leaves than Sarah's.

Agness was a daughter of Andrew and Mary Catherwood, residents of Wilmington. Andrew and Agness died on the same day, October 1, 1802, likely from yellow fever. The outbreak that year began in Philadelphia and spread through Wilmington in September and October.

Sarah (Sally) Truitt also stitched her sampler in 1795. She and Agness Catherwood used the same verse, "Still as Thro' Life's Meandering Path I Stray…," which came from a collection of readings used in schools. Her multi-colored basket is much like Agness' and both girls included four butterflies and a pair of birds with their flowers. Sally also placed her name and the year the sampler was made inside the lower compartment.

Sally Truitt (1780-1803) was the only child of George Truitt and Margaret Hodgson Truitt. She grew up on the family farm near Felton in Kent County, Delaware, and may have boarded in Wilmington when she made her sampler. Her father served in the Delaware General Assembly for eighteen years and was Governor of Delaware from 1807 through 1811. Sally married Dr. James H. Fisher on March 19, 1801. She died July 15, 1803, nine days after their second son, Frederick, was born; the child also died.

Samplers from other areas of New Castle County

Priscilla Talley (1824-1899) stitched a sampler with family names and initials 1839 that resembled two others made about the same time.  She used the color red extensively in her work and stitched floral borders at the top of her sampler, but placed strawberry vines at the sides. Instead of a border at the bottom, she created a barnyard of cows, sheep, dogs, lions, and two chickens in fanciful colors. One of the sheep sports a beige and rust checkered coat and the chickens are striped with many colors. Squirrels on either side of a box holding text complete the menagerie. Priscilla stitched her name and date under the box. Her sampler is so eye-catching that the authors selected it as the cover image for Delaware Discoveries.

The names of Priscilla's parents, the Reverend Lewis S. Talley and Priscilla Clark Talley, are stitched near the top of her samplers. The initials scattered through her work represent the names of her siblings. Only one set remains unidentified. "EH," placed to the left of Priscilla's name, could be her teacher. Priscilla's father was a Methodist minister and the family resided at Talley's Corner in Brandywine Hundred, New Castle County. About 1844, Priscilla married William C. McCracken, a farmer from near Aston, Delaware County, Pennsylvania. They had four daughters and one son.

Mary Elizabeth Penton stitched her sampler in 1839 when her family lived in Brandywine Springs, New Castle County. She included many floral motifs and stitched two verses often found on samplers, "Teach Me to Feel Another's Woes…" and "I sigh not for beauty…" Little is known about her life prior to her marriage in the mid-1840s to another Brandywine Springs resident, Nathan Hiram Yearsley, the son of a blacksmith. The family remained in Delaware until about 1852, then moved to Virginia, Pennsylvania, and Ohio, before settling in Marshall Township, Taylor County, Iowa, by 1885, where Nathan and Thomas, the couple's oldest son, farmed. Nathan died in 1890 and Mary Elizabeth and son Thomas remained in Iowa for another fifteen years. In 1906 Mary Elizabeth, Thomas, and Thomas' niece and nephew relocated to the province of Alberta, Canada, where they obtained a homestead under the Dominion Lands Act. Thomas improved the property and farmed. Mary Elizabeth Penton Yearsley died in 1911 and Thomas followed the next year. They are both buried in Highwood Cemetery in High River, Alberta, Canada.

Sarah Welsh (ca. 1820-?) is one of two known samplers from Miss Eliza Norris' school in "B Hundred" (Brandywine Hundred). She included Miss Norris' name and the abbreviated version of the school's location at the bottom on her sampler, along with the date 1831. Sarah stitched an alphabet in the four corners of the sampler, using a different font for each one. A floral vine occupies space at the bottom of the sampler, encasing Sarah's attribution, and another at the top provides a cover for eight lines from two different hymns. She stitched a large dog at the center of the sampler with a floral basket at each side.

Miss Eliza Norris may be the same teacher who worked at the Brandywine Manufacturers Sunday School (BMSS), operated by the du Pont family for young employees of its workforce at the Hagley Powder Mills. Unlike today's Sunday schools, Brandywine and other similar schools offered classes in basic education on Sunday, the only day of the week when employees did not work. A student by the name of Sarah Welsh attended BMSS at the time Eliza Norris taught there, as did a girl named Mary Orr, the name on the other known sampler from Miss Norris' school. Both girls are mentioned in the BMSS academic records. Another piece of evidence linking Sarah and Miss Norris to BMSS is the first quatrain at the top of her sampler, which is from a collection of hymns published by the American Sunday School Union, which supported schools such as BMSS.

Sarah Welsh was a daughter of Hugh Welsh and his wife, Ellen. A brother, John, who was born in 1818, attended BMSS at the same time as his sister. A note on Sarah's BMSS record states that she "Ceased attending July 1834. Married to ?". Sarah and her mother may be the Sarah Welch (sic), age 28, and Ellene Welch (sic), age 60, residing in Christiana Hundred, New Castle County, in the 1850 census.

Samplers in Kent County

Girls attending Southern Boarding School, a Quaker school located in Duck Creek in northern Kent County, produced more than twenty-five samplers over its short existence. Samplers were made in other areas of the county as well. While Kent County is home to Delaware's capital, Dover, it is much more rural than its northern neighbor, New Castle County. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, Kent County had a predominantly agricultural economy and the landscape was dotted with farms and small towns and villages.

Samplers from Southern Boarding School

The Society of Friends, or Quakers, established Southern Boarding School in Duck Creek (now Smyrna) so that Quaker children living in southern Delaware and the Eastern Shore counties of Maryland could get an education tied to their religion. The coeducational school operated in two buildings on Methodist Street, now Mount Vernon Street, from 1801 until about 1806. Some teachers and students relocated to a Quaker school in Camden, about fifteen miles south of Duck Creek, when Southern Boarding School closed.

Girls at Southern Boarding School made several styles of samplers. Elizabeth Caulk stitched a Quaker motif sampler in 1802. She included three octagonal cartouches, one containing a swan, another paired birds, and the third, the "An Emblem of Love" motto. She included several floral motifs, all typical of those found on Quaker samplers, and a floral vine wreath in which she stitched the initials "EY," representing her teacher, Elizabeth Yarnall.

Isaac Caulk, Elizabeth's father, was originally from Kent County, Maryland, and he married Elizabeth Molleston at Three Runs Meeting near Milford, Kent County, Delaware. The Caulk family lived in Cecil County, Maryland, for the first few years after Elizabeth and Isaac married, then relocated to Kent County, Maryland. Elizabeth married Samuel Cox on December 19, 1821, and the couple lived in Harford County, Maryland, where Samuel's parents also resided. They were members of the Deer Creek Meeting in Harford County, which took disciplinary action against Samuel and Elizabeth Cox and their two sons, Isaac and Oliver in 1835. The action referred to matters of faith, and the Cox family was not mentioned again in the minutes of Deer Creek Meeting.

Ann Mercer (1796-1851) stitched a family record sampler at Southern Boarding School about 1803, including the name of the school on the sampler. She included a short verse at the bottom of her sampler, and at the top, details about her family. She stitched her parents' names and marriage date, followed by the names and birthdates of the five children in the family. She added the death dates of her brother James, her mother Rebecca, and John Mercer, either her brother or her father. Rebecca died just two months after the birth of her last child, Harriet, and a few weeks after the deaths of James and John. Ann later attended the Moravian school in Lititz, Pennsylvania, along with her sister, Harriet.

Ann married David Davis in Cecil County on December 19, 1811. David died on July 25, 1814; the younger of their two children, named after his father, was born eight months after his father's death. Ann then married Franklin Betts, a farmer from Massachusetts, and the family lived in Otsego County, New York, where Ann died on November 25, 1851. Ann Mercer's descendants include a circuit court judge from Illinois who later became a United States Supreme Court justice and two Presidents of the United States.

Samplers Elsewhere in Kent County

Two other samplers from Kent County closely resemble each other and may be evidence of a school or teacher offering needlework instruction in the area where the girls lived. Rebecca E. (Ellen) Craig and Louretta Downham worked their samplers in 1844 and 1845, respectively. The girls separated rows of letters, numerals, text, and motifs with narrow dividing bands. They stitched several alphabets at the top, ending the final alphabet with an ampersand, and worked numerals on their samplers, but in different locations. Beneath the alphabets and numerals, Rebecca stitched "Rebecca E. Craig's Sampler Work'd in her 15^th Year 1844"; Louretta used the same language to report that she made her sampler in her 12^th year in 1845. The bottom row in each sampler included a zigzag line with motifs and family initials stitched in the open areas. Initials on Rebecca's sampler represented her parents and siblings, and Louretta stitched her own initials and those of her parents. Rebecca's motifs were small, individual flowers, while Louretta included a few small flowers, along with three flower baskets that were more complex. Both girls included an outer floral vine border and a narrow inner border, which Rebecca worked in cross stitches and Louretta in sawtooth stitches.

Rebecca Craig was a daughter of John Craig and Rachel Wallace Craig, who married in 1814. The Craig family lived on a farm in Dover Hundred about seven miles southwest of the state capital, Dover. John died in 1832, shortly after the birth of the family's youngest child, also named John, in 1831. The family remained on the farm until Rebecca's death in 1869. In 1856, Rebecca married Elisha Wright, who farmed with his father in Dover Hundred near the village of Hartley. The Wrights had six sons and one daughter; four of their sons and their daughter died as infants or young children. Rebecca and Elisha remained on the farm until their deaths within less than two years of one another, Rebecca on April 21, 1903, and Elisha on December 14, 1904. Both are buried at Bryn Zion Cemetery in Kenton, Kent County, along with other family members.

Louretta Downham (1833-1849) was born Louretta Fowler and came to the Downham family via an indenture. The Kent County Trustees of the Poor sent her to live with James Downham and his wife, Tamza (Tamsey) Downham in 1837 to learn "housewifery," when she was just four years old. They were required to provide a basic education for her, which seemed to have included needlework. Louretta died in 1849 at age fifteen, according to her tombstone, though other sources record her death as 1850. At the time of her death, she was living and working in the household of Samuel Broadway Cooper. She was buried in the Cooper Family Cemetery near the Kent County town of Petersburg, about five miles from the Craig farm. Louretta's tombstone is inscribed with her name, birth and death dates, and the notation that she was the "Adopted dau. of James Downham," though no confirmation of a legal adoption has been found.

Ann Eliza Lockwood (1816-1896) stitched her sampler in 1826. It is a long vertical rectangle, of a size and shape frequently seen in the two lower Delaware Counties, though many of those samplers include only alphabets. At the top of her sampler under a zigzag border, Ann Eliza stitched a long verse, "The Youth's Request," that has appeared on other samplers.  She stitched her name and the date made beneath the verse, followed by a group of Quaker motifs. She added a floral vine border along the sides and bottom of the sampler.

Ann Eliza was a daughter of William Kirkley Lockwood and his wife, Mary Polk Hayes Lockwood. She spent her early years in Murderkill and Saint Jones Hundreds in Kent County. Her mother died from complications of childbirth when Ann Eliza was just four years old. The Lockwoods maintained a close relationship with Mary Lockwood's parents after her death, and Mary's step-mother, Ann Bell Emerson Hayes, along with William Lockwood's half-sister, Martha Lockwood, stepped in to assist with raising the children. Ann Hayes, a member of the Society of Friends, may have been responsible for the Quaker motifs on Ann Eliza's sampler.

Anne Eliza came from a military and political family. Her brother, General Henry Hayes Lockwood, distinguished himself in the Union Army during the Civil War. Her father, William Kirkley Lockwood, served in the U.S. Navy for two years before settling in Murderkill Hundred, where he joined the Delaware Militia's Fifth Regiment and saw active duty during the War of 1812. He later commanded the Fifth Regiment, holding the title of colonel. After relocating to Dover, he served in a number of government roles, including register of wills, register of the Court of Chancery, clerk of the Orphans' Court, and Dover town commissioner, as well as representing Kent County in the Delaware House of Representatives.

Prior to 1844, Ann Eliza Lockwood married Henry M. Godwin, a member of a prominent Caroline County, Maryland, family. They had one son who lived for less than a year and four daughters. Henry represented Caroline County in the Maryland House of Delegates. He died in 1853 while in Annapolis, leaving Ann Eliza with three young children and pregnant with their fourth, who was born eight days after her father's death. After the loss of Henry, Ann Eliza and her children moved to her father's residence in Dover. Ann Eliza died in 1896 and is buried at Christ Episcopal Church Cemetery with her parents and children.

Samplers in Sussex County

Sussex County is the southernmost county in Delaware. It borders Maryland on the west and south, and the Delaware River and Bay and the Atlantic Ocean on the east. The town of Lewes at the mouth of the Delaware Bay was home to the first European settlement in the state in 1631. Coastal areas today are popular vacation and retirement destinations, while inland areas are rural with an economy based on agriculture. Travel in the area during the days when girls made samplers was complicated by the marshy soil, particularly near rivers, creeks, and bays. It was often easier to travel by boat than by land on horseback or in a carriage.

Lewes was the center of sampler making activity in Sussex County during the 1800s. The number of known samplers made in Lewes schools is approximately equal to those made elsewhere in the county. There are no known needlework teachers or schools that offered needlework instruction in other areas of Sussex County. Samplers made in Lewes schools have distinctive styles and those in other parts of the county tend toward alphabet or genealogical samplers, including family record samplers.

Samplers in Lewes

Mrs. Bowers and Mrs. Thompson operated two needlework schools in Lewes at different times. Known samplers from Mrs. George (Eliza) Bowers' school are dated between 1806 and 1808, though Mrs. Bowers' name is not stitched on them, and again between 1817 and 1823 when her name appears on most of the samplers. The earlier samplers attributed to Mrs. Bowers are nearly identical to one another and resemble some of the later samplers that do include her name; later samplers include different styles as well. Mrs. Thompson's school operated at least from 1831 through 1833.

Margaret (Peggy) West (ca. 1799 – 1860) stitched her sampler in 1808. Her work and others in this group feature an abundance of vines and flowers, houses with lawns, and Quaker motifs. All include verses, though they differ from sampler to sampler. Peggy West was a daughter of Robert and Naomi Thompson West. She married Elisha Dickerson Cullen, an attorney in Georgetown, the seat of Sussex County, in 1822. They had six children, including a son who also became an attorney. Elisha served in the Delaware House of Representatives for one term. Peggy Cullen died in 1860 and her husband in 1862. They are buried at Lewes Presbyterian Church, along with Peggy's parents, several of their children, and some of Peggy's siblings.

Eliza Marriner (1803-1881) made her sampler in 1817 and it is attributed to Mrs. Bowers' School. Her genealogical sampler provides detailed information about her family listed in two columns, their tops linked by a leafy vine. A tree stands next to the right column and more family details are stitched between it and the left column.

Eliza was one of ten children born to Simon and Sarah Wolfe Marriner, who resided in Lewes. As was the case with several Lewes sampler makers, Eliza had male relatives who were Delaware River and Bay pilots, the men who guided ships up and down the dangerous waters between the Atlantic Ocean and ports along the Delaware River up to Philadelphia. Her brother Gilbert was a pilot. His wife Deborah was a member of the Maull family; more than forty of her male relatives served as pilots between the early 1700s and early 1900s. Eliza's father operated a tavern in Lewes. After his death in 1811, her mother, Sarah, acquired his license and managed the tavern until her death in 1817. Research shows that tavern keeper was one of a few occupations open to women at the time and was considered to be an acceptable way for a woman to support herself and her children.

Eliza married John Henry Oberteuffer in 1828. They had three sons and two daughters and resided in Philadelphia, where John was an importer of silks. Eliza died in 1881 and John in 1871.

Ann P. Burton worked a sampler in 1821, noting that it was made at "Mrs. Bower's School Lewes." It is a style that is very similar to several others from the school. She also included such family details as the names and marriage date for her parents, Cornelius and Sarah Burton, and the births, with dates, of her siblings. She noted the death dates of her father and brother John M. Following her father's death, her mother married Thomas Rodney, and Ann reported their marriage and the birth of their daughter, Ruth. 

Because of the early death of Ann's father, the courts appointed a guardian to look after Cornelius' estate, especially for the benefit of his children. Sarah administered the estate and records show payments to Mrs. Bowers' school for Ann's education. She later attended another school in Lewes conducted by Dr. William Harris and one in Milton operated by the Reverend Shadrach Howell Terry, a Presbyterian minister.

Ann married Reverend Nathan Kingsbury, a minister at St. George's Chapel in Indian River Hundred, Sussex County, and St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Lewes. Her husband also kept a school for young ladies in Georgetown, the Sussex County seat. Ann died in 1837 and is buried in St. Peters Churchyard in Lewes.

Elizabeth West Carpenter made her sampler under the direction of Mrs. Thopson in 1831. Her sampler includes a bounty of family information, though some is recorded with initials.  She includes her parents' and sibling's information. Three of her siblings were married at the time Elizabeth stitched her sampler; she listed their spouses, and for one sister, the initials of her four children. 

Elizabeth was one of twelve children born to James Carpenter and Mary Dean Carpenter, who married in Lewes in 1798.  Prior to 1838, Elizabeth married Captain Henry Virden, a Delaware Bay, and River pilot. They had at least six children and three of their sons also became pilots. Their son John Penrose Virden was elected president of the Delaware Bay and River Pilots Association when it formed in 1896 and he served in this role for twenty-one years. Elizabeth died at age seventy-five and is buried in the churchyard at St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Lewes, along with her parents, husband, several siblings, and daughter, Annie.

Sampler from Sussex County

Lydia B. Wharton (1809-1876) made her sampler in 1821. It is a long rectangle, a common form shape for samplers in Sussex County. While at first glance, her sampler appears to be a simple alphabet sampler with a few small motifs, a closer examination revealed more complicated stitches that are not always seen on alphabet samplers. In addition to cross stitches over two threads, Lydia used double backstitch, queen stitch, cross stitch over one thread, Algerian eye stitch, and rice stitch. She included the initials of her parents and siblings.

Lydia was a daughter of Isaiah and Hetty Wharton, who lived in the Millsboro area of Dagsboro Hundred. Hetty was most like a member of the large Burton family found in Sussex County. The Whartons and Burtons settled in Delaware and neighboring Maryland counties in the 1600s. Isaiah owned and farmed land in Dagsboro Hundred along Indian River and its tributaries. He died in 1815, leaving several young children. Hetty married Thomas Robinson shortly after Isaiah's death and the court appointed him as the children's guardian. The records for Isaiah's estate show payments for the children's education.

In 1831, Lydia married Robert Bell Houston, whose family owned a farm near the Whartons. They had nine children, all boys. Robert inherited some of his family's land in the Millsboro area. He and his sons were active in their community and local and state politics. Robert was a delegate to the Fourth Constitutional Convention in Delaware and son John was state treasurer for four years. Another son, Henry Aydelotte, taught school, served in the U.S. House of Representatives for two years and was a member of the Sussex County school commission. He and a partner founded a company in 1890 that manufactured baskets for agricultural use, responding to a documented need created by growing farm production in the state. They adopted modern manufacturing techniques and their efficient company soon became the second largest producer of baskets in the state. A third son, Charles Bell, served as a director of a local bank and a trustee of the county almshouse and was elected to the state senate, serving as its speaker in 1893.

Lydia died in 1876 and Robert, in 1892. Their burial location is not known.

--------------------------------------

The Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover, Delaware, will hold an exhibit of about 125 Delaware samplers from May 19 through July 22, 2018. The Biggs will also host a one-day symposium about Delaware samplers on Saturday, June 9, 2018. Visit the Biggs website at http://www.biggsmuseum.orgor telephone 302-674-2111 for details.

Delaware Discoveries: Schoolgirl Samplers, 1750-1850, by Dr. Gloria Seaman Allen and Cynthia Shank Steinhoff is now available for sale at the Biggs Museum.*

*updated

It is our great pleasure to share a recent interview that we conducted with a dear friend whose outstanding collection of antique samplers is showcased on the well-known and highly regarded website, antiquesamplers.org.

The stated mission of the website is “to foster the study of, and education about antique samplers in their historic as well as needlework context,” and the contribution this site makes to the field cannot be overstated. On a personal note, she is generous, thoughtful and intelligent, evidencing serious dedication to the field and an engaging sense of humor. She is also a compassionate and philanthropic supporter of the arts in a variety of areas and a talented needlewoman herself. This interview provides fascinating insights into the collector and her samplers.As she maintains a desire for anonymity, we refer to her throughout as AS.O, referring of course, to the website.

MF&D: Your website is certainly an enormous contribution to the sampler world; the community of sampler making and collecting, and the education of collectors, and we’re delighted to have you here for this interview and to share some of your thoughts with us. To begin with – what got you interested in collecting samplers?

AS.ORG: Well, I think it started because my mom taught me to do needlework when I was a little girl, so it’s always been a part of the culture of my life. I’ve taken needlework classes and been a member of guilds and so forth, and I don’t think I ever thought about collecting needlework per se, but my mother would be quick to tell you that I collect collections, and she’s not wrong. I was learning to play the harp, and Amy [Finkel] had a sampler with a lyre on it and I thought “I could have that. I can afford that that. That would be a very cool thing.” And that was the first sampler I bought.

And then I’ve always liked Scottish things, although not for any specific reason, as I have no Scottish heritage. I had contacted Amy about wanting to get a Scottish sampler and she sent me pictures of two really different samplers, one is Christina Forrest and the other one is Christian Macvean, and they’re both up on the site. And I thought, “well I can’t decide, they’re both fabulous,” so I took those both and the rest is history… 700 samplers later…!

MF&D: So speaking of 700 samplers, your site is a catalog of your collection, really, and with that it informs everybody else, but you don’t have all of your samplers up yet; is this a goal?

AS.ORG: That is a goal, yes. I have a few samplers that I bought over the years on eBay for one reason or another that are really in awful shape, and I them have in a box for teaching kids, they can really be manhandled and if they get more shredded I don’t care, so they might not be put on the site. And there are some samplers that I feel keep getting bumped to the bottom of the list because they’re perhaps less interesting and genealogy isn’t available on them and so they get bumped down the list, but my goal is to have as many up there as possible and to keep continually updating the research on them.

MF&D: You mentioned you collect other things as well.

AS.ORG: Well, I collect needlework tools and I also collect antique buttons, and so they’re all kind of related to this. However, I found that when I got to collecting samplers, the fact was that I could do lots of genealogical research and I just love giving these girls dimension. It makes me feel like we are giving a little girl a second life by identifying where she was born, knowing that her father was a watchmaker, and that they lived here and then she married this man and he owned the woolen mill. It’s kind of like writing a story and its true story; so I find that really exciting.

MF&D: Along the same lines, specifically when looking for a sampler, what draws you to a given sampler?

AS.ORG: Sometimes it’ll be the verse, sometimes it’ll be where the girl’s from; if it’s Scottish I have to decide “I’ve already got one from there, do I need another one?” There are specific elements; I love the sun and moon and sky on samplers and when I see them I kind of keep going back to that sampler. I love a lot of florals on samplers and you don’t always see that, but then I also like the really quirky, folky ones that have odd depictions; I mean a depiction of Napoleon on his camp bed, or a picture of Tom Thumb. Clearly these are evidentiary of what was in the current events of the day and I love seeing those replicated, the opening of the bridge over the Menai Strait, for example. This was a big deal that they built this suspension bridge, important enough that a whole group of girls did a group of samplers with a very detailed depiction of it… and then there’s the needlework itself of course.

MF&D: As we’ve discussed, you have a large collection of Scottish samplers, so what draws you to Scottish samplers as opposed to samplers from any other country?

AS.ORG: I think primarily the fact that the samplermakers give us so much help in tracking their genealogy because of the Scottish customs, there’s the naming custom where the first son is named after the paternal father; the second son is named after the maternal father. And they used so many initials; they frequently even put their parents’ names on a sampler. The women maintained their maiden names. So then it makes the potential for finding where they’re from easier, and Scotland is a small enough country that my goal is ultimately to get a sampler from every shire in Scotland .

MF&D: Do they keep good genealogical records in Scotland?

AS.ORG: Yes, excellent. There’s a website called “Scotland’s People.” In the past, if you wanted a copy of some information, you used to have to pay £10 and they would send it to you and it would take about a month or so. Now it’s all online and you can just go in. You have to pay for it, it’s not a free site, but you can get a print of the actual handwritten page from the parish records; whether it’s the marriage or the birth or whatever, and that to me is what’s really cool, because that’s where you find out that Peter Wilson was a watchmaker. I really like that.

MF&D: Yes, the sleuthing involved.

AS.ORG: I very much like the sleuthing. And I like the Scottish girls; a lot of them have a really fun kind of folky quality to them, and I enjoy that aspect of the Scottish samplers.

MF&D: Do you have a favorite sampler? Not necessarily Scottish.

AS.ORG: It’s an interesting thing, but I get asked that question a lot, and the truth of it is I have a group of samplers that I would call my favorites. The other one that I always love is the latest sampler; the one I just got is always my favorite. I have a couple; I probably have about 10 samplers that would qualify as favorites. I have an American sampler that actually had a clock from birth to death. This sampler is ginormous, it’s probably 36 by 48 [inches]. and it’s rows and rows and rows and rows and rows of alphabets and then over here towards the bottom there’s a verse, and there’s all the genealogy stuff, and then in this one corner is an amazing clock, and it’s done sort of like a sun dial. It has the baby born and then it has children playing with a kite, then the marriage and then the coffin over here, and it’s all pictorial. It shows you where you’ll be, if you look at where you are on this chart, presuming that you’re going to die when you’re 70, as that’s what it says on it.

MF&D: As you had mentioned, you do a lot of needlework yourself and, in part, that drew you to collecting samplers. What types of needlework do you do?

AS.ORG: My favorite is canvaswork. Doing needlepoint and a lot of the same stitches that the sampler girls do on their pieces, but done on fine canvas, on congress cloth, which is 24 count. I also like working on linen and I like doing reproductions, and I’ve taken a lot of classes. In fact women who’ve helped me with a lot of the antique samplers that have to be conserved and remounted I met through the Embroiderer’s Guild, and they all do reproduction samplers. It’s kind of cute because of working on my samplers, now when I go into needlework shops and look at the kits for the reproduction samplers it’s if we’re jaded because they don’t look like the originals.

MF&D: So you allow certain pieces of yours to be reproduced?

AS.ORG: Yes, I have one person, Margriet Hogue, The Essamplaire, who is the only one I’ve given permission to reproduce my samplers.

MF&D: What makes you choose which ones will be reproduced?

AS.ORG: I let her choose. I think there are ones that would be wonderful, but Margriet knows the best marketing tools, so I pretty much just let her do what she wants.

MF&D: Regarding samplers having their own personalities and histories, do you feel in that respect any downside to reproducing a piece, as they were somewhat personal?

AS.ORG: Well there are many people out there who would love to own samplers and they can’t afford to buy them. So by being able to make a reproduction, it’s their way of having one. You get into such an interesting thing there too, with a reproduction sampler. If you have one you’re reproducing and some of it’s missing, do you chart the part that’s missing to say this is how it would have been? It becomes an interesting dilemma; do you make it historically accurate to today, or where it was in the beginning? I think it serves people who just want antique samplers but can’t buy them.

MF&D: As far as collectors are concerned and in regard to collecting antique samplers, or collecting in general, is there any advice you would give to them?

AS.ORG: I think that a lot of people think that they can’t collect because it will cost too much. I think its fun to start with small things. Certainly there’s a lot of needlework that can be collected, and other things as well, but you don’t always have to buy the best and the most expensive. It is fun to look on eBay and to look elsewhere and just try to learn as much as you can. There are a lot of disreputable people out there who are selling things on eBay, so you do have to have some knowledge. Someone that’s just starting may not want to spend quite so much money; but certainly buying from a dealer is the safest way because then you are buying their reputation and the security that what they are selling is what it is. You can’t pay enough money for the value of that. But for somebody who just wants to start out, there are some ways that you can find things that are less expensive. Some people might say “Oh M. Finkel & Daughter, that must be expensive” but even within the context of what’s available from you, there are some modest priced pieces, and almost anybody can afford to own a piece. And it really is like owning a piece of history.

MF&D: You know at M. Finkel & Daughter, we are very aware of how condition affects values of samplers. You said you have some pieces that aren’t in great condition, and that they’re good study pieces, which we understand. But from a collector’s stand point what would you say about the importance of condition?

AS.ORG: You can’t say enough about that subject. I think that often this is one of the reasons that samplers from a dealer are going to be more valuable. Some dealers are cautious about condition and also about conservation. They’ll have done the conservation work for you; it’s going to be stabilized if it needed it and you’re not going to have to do anything. But I’ve also bought a lot of samplers from dealers who aren’t that careful. Particularly as I’m trying to collect a sampler from every shire in Scotland, I’ve run into a lot of samplers that really need a lot of stabilization and work, and I don’t mind that. I bought a pair of samplers that were done by sisters, and by a quirk of fate I learned there was a sampler made by their third sister. The dealers that I originally bought the two from didn’t buy the third one because it wasn’t in as good condition and they didn’t want to deal with it. It ended up coming to me through another dealer around the bend. And for the three sisters to be united, I wouldn’t have cared if she had holes up one side and down the other on something like that because the family’s back together!

MF&D: What does the future hold for your collection?

AS.ORG: I’m hoping someday to afford to have my samplers be in a physical museum-type setting, and there’s a plan in the works for doing that. My plan would be for the collection to be where it can be studied. That’s really the only condition I’m putting on the group of people that I hope to take on the responsibility of it. If someone wants to study 18 th century Scottish samplers, they will be able to make an appointment and the samplers will be pulled out of storage for them. I would hate to see them put where nobody would ever get to see them. I think that’s the main reason I created the website, as well, so that people can study and learn from them.

Speaking of the world, we know you have a lot of subscribers to your website, what percentage resides outside of the U.S.?

AS.ORG: I’d say close to 25%. I was really surprised at the number of people we have from France, England, Denmark, and from India, Japan, New Zealand, Australia. It’s been fun. We got a letter from a woman in France, written in French bemoaning the fact that our information wasn’t available in French, making it difficult for her to read.

MF&D: In which case you’d have to make it available in every language.

AS.ORG: Right. And then it was kind of cute because my nephew is French-Canadian and he’s married to a French woman. I had her write the response, so then we could send the woman in France a proper French response saying “well at least you can enjoy the pictures.” But it’s a little more than we can do to translate the site.

MF&D: We know you are interested in educating people about samplers. Would you ever consider writing a book?

AS.ORG: You know I think that there are a lot of people who are more scholarly and have done the research in specific directions like Gloria Allen with Maryland samplers and now DC samplers, or Naomi Tarrant, who I keep hoping is going to finish one of these days soon on Scottish samplers; she doesn’t just want to do a catalogue of Scottish samplers, she’s taking a specific line and developing it. I think there are researchers out there that are doing that. I wouldn’t be opposed to the idea, but I would want to write more like a storybook. I think it would be fun to pick a sampler and to evolve almost like a children’s story about the young girl who made it. That’s something I’ve thought about doing and that would be fun to do. That’s more my speed. But I’m happy to contribute to all these other researchers with what I’ve got, the samplers that I own; make available the information that I have.

MF&D: I know that I haven’t touched on all aspects of your site, but I think that you as a person are so fascinating, and I’m glad that I got to talk to you. Are there any other subjects or questions that you would like to talk about?

AS.ORG: No, I think I appreciate more than anything the feedback that I get from people on the website. We have a Spanish member who told us that on one of my Spanish samplers I had the name wrong. Having done no research on Spanish samplers I didn’t understand the Spanish naming traditions, and I was thrilled to death to have that information. Something that you and Amy suggested was a great idea but because I’m so accustomed to dealing with people who do reproduction samplers, I hadn’t thought of it: that in the glossary we should have diagrams of the stitches, so that somebody who is coming at it strictly from book learning and still loves the samplers will know what the stitches actually look like. When I’m talking about a long arm cross stitch or a herringbone stitch they have no idea what I’m talking about, so they’d have a drawing of the stitch. I love receiving information like that, and ways that we can make the site more interesting, more accessible and more educational.

MF&D: We can’t thank you enough for your time today and for all you’ve contributed to this field.

Connecticut Needlework: Women, Art, and Family, 1740-1840, on view at the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford from October 6, 2010 through March 26, 2011, explores regional needlework production in unprecedented depth and variety. More than eighty works, drawn almost entirely from the CHS’s extensive collections, provide a varied and sometimes surprising survey of needlework produced in the state prior to 1840: colonial canvas-work, quilting, and crewel-embroidered bed hangings; Revolutionary-era bed rugs; elegant depictions of classical, religious, and memorial scenes embroidered in silk during the Federal era; early 19th-century family registers and white-work, and of course, samplers.

An entire gallery celebrates Connecticut sampler making, with more than forty examples exploring design and stitching traditions from families, schools, and towns throughout the state. Lucy Spalding’s 1793 sampler (fig. 1, at end of article) holds the distinction of being the first sampler to enter the CHS collection, donated by a Connecticut native striking out for the Far West two years before the opening shots of the Civil War, and six decades before Ethel Bolton and Eva Coe’s landmark publication, American Samplers. Lucy’s square shape and imaginatively compartmentalized design connect her work to an extended series of samplers made in and around the prosperous seaport town of Norwich, in southeastern Connecticut.

Ruth W. Patten’s 1808 sampler (fig. 2, at end of article) provides the first example of a sampler to be attributed to the Patten family school, taught in Hartford by Ruth’s three aunts, and better known for elegant silk embroidered coats of arms and allegorical and religious pictures. Ruth’s yellow and orange cross-stitches, set off by a green linsey-woolsey ground (linen and wool plain-weave), connect her work to a local tradition of samplers stitched in this color combination. The pictorial panel at the bottom of the sampler suggests that Ruth was just learning silk embroidery techniques, producing a simple display of carrots, grapes, and strawberries arrayed on a grassy hillock, stitched with a backing fabric of glazed brown cotton to reinforce the loosely woven ground in this area.

Two names appear on a delightful 1811 sampler from the northeastern-most Connecticut town of Thompson (fig. 3, at end of article): Abigail Watson and Ann S. Gay likely represent teacher and student, but incomplete biographical information has thus far made it impossible to ascertain which was which. The pictorial panel in the center of the composition suggests the influence of Newport house samplers, with the individualizing touches of a tavern sign hanging from one corner of the dwelling and an attic flight of stairs glimpsed through a second floor window.

Miranda Robinson’s 1839 sampler (fig. 4, at end of article), one of the latest in the exhibition, is notable as an extremely rare example of decorative embroidery known to have been the work of a free black girl. Made in Long Island community of Saybrook (now Old Saybrook), it was preserved in the collection of noted twentieth-century author, Ann Petry, the first African American woman writer to sell over one million copies of a novel.

Three additional galleries complement the samplers, enriching understanding and appreciation by illuminating the long and varied regional needlework traditions from which individual sampler makers emerged. The exhibition opens with a gallery devoted to the work of earlier generations of Connecticut needleworkers, many of them the direct ancestors of the sampler makers. The CHS collections are particularly rich in pre-Revolutionary needlework, facilitating comparisons of familiar crewel embroidered bed hangings and canvaswork pocketbooks with less frequently seen genres, such as quilted petticoats and silk embroidered shoes.

A third gallery features silk embroidered pictures, with idealized pastoral visions of the mid-eighteenth-century succeeded by more literal neo-classical, Biblical, and literary scenes in the early nineteenth century. Several pictures represent Connecticut ’s three best-known girls schools: the Patten family school and Lydia Bull Royse’s school, both in Hartford, and Sarah Pierce’s school in the northwestern Connecticut town of Litchfield.

The final gallery presents needlework forms characterized by a shared concern for family identification – family registers, memorial pictures, and coats of arms. Mary Bidwell’s family register, ca. 1762, represents the earliest known American needlework example (predating by more than a decade the earliest previously recorded needlework specimen, also from the Hartford area). Family portrait memorials, a genre that Betty Ring associated strongly with Connecticut, are represented by three examples; the eleven headless figures in the unfinished Punderson family memorial offer a fascinating glimpse into the creative process.

Reinforcing the connections between needlework and family, the exhibition closes with an unprecedented celebration of needlework from several generations of the Punderson family of southeastern Connecticut. Prudence Punderson’s silk-embroidered allegorical picture, “The First, Second, and Last Scene of Mortality,” is by far the most frequently published object in CHS’s entire collection. It appears here not as a work as individual genius – which it undeniably is – but as the culminating achievement of several generations of talented needleworkers, the female equivalent of kinship-based workshop traditions in male-dominated trades such as woodworking and metalsmithing.

The exhibition is accompanied by a collection catalog of the same title, authored by Dr. Susan P. Schoelwer, former Director of Museum Collections at the Connecticut Historical Society and now Curator at George Washington’s Mount Vernon. Distributed by Wesleyan University Press, the volume is available from the University Press of New England ($ 65 cloth, $ 30 paper).

Two-page spreads for seventy catalog entries feature full-page illustrations of each of the selected works, accompanied by a page of text discussing each example and its maker (the vast majority of whom can be identified, thanks to strong family histories supported by extensive genealogical research). Photographs of stitches, reverse sides, sketches, design sources, and related works enhance understanding and appreciation of the samplers and other needlework genres.

Four major themes emerge from this study of Connecticut needlework: first, the vital contribution of needlework to the development of the visual arts in the region; second, the importance of multi-generational family traditions in disseminating and perpetuating needlework skills and designs, both before and after the widespread establishment of formal female academies in the Federal period; third, an unexpected correlation between needlework skills and advanced education (contrary to the popular notion that these two pursuits were antithetical, in early Connecticut the most skilled needleworkers were often among the most highly educated women of their time and place); and fourth, the gradual demographic diffusion of needlework (centered primarily among the clerical elite and their relations in the colonial period, then spreading to the daughters of small industrialists and entrepreneurs after the Revolution, and finally to the households of tradesmen and farmers in the ante-bellum period). These interpretive themes build upon the pioneering research of earlier needlework scholars (most notably the late Susan B. Swan, Glee Krueger, and Betty Ring) to suggest new approaches to future explorations of regional needlework, throughout early America.

A one-day symposium will be held at CHS on Saturday, October 30, featuring talks by catalog author Susan Schoelwer; Linda Baumgarten, Curator, Colonial Williamsburg Foundation; Textile Conservator Dierdre Windsor; and Linda Eaton, Curator, Winterthur Museum. Please contact Mary Muller at CHS for further schedule and registration information ( http://store.chs.org/products/Needlework-Conference%3A-October-30%2C-2010.html ; telephone 860-236-5621).

Financial support for Connecticut Needlework has been provided by major grants from the Coby Foundation, Ltd., and the National Endowment for the Arts, and from generous sponsors, including M. Finkel & Daughter.

Susan P. Schoelwer

Author, Connecticut Needlework: Women, Art, and Family, 1740-1840

Curator, George Washington’s Mount Vernon Estate & Gardens

The author continues to assemble data on Connecticut needlework. Readers who own or know of examples are encouraged to send images and information, including genealogical research, to: spschoelwer@gmail.com .

Fig. 1. Lucy Spalding’s sampler, dated 1793, probably Plainfield, Connecticut
Courtesy of the Connecticut Historical Society, Gift of Hezekiah Lord Hosmer, 1859.18.2

Fig. 2. Ruth W. Patten’s sampler, dated 1808, attributed to Patten Family School, Hartford
Gift of Mrs. Theda Lundquist, 2001.29.0

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.” 

Sight size: 7½” x 33½”   •   Framed size: 12” x 38”   •  SOLD

Occasionally we offer significant needlework that is outside of our speciality of 18th and early 19th century schoolgirl samplers, and we are very pleased to be able to present this extremely rare and very early example. This Buratto panel is a tour de force of needlework; additionally, it is highly arresting from an aesthetic standpoint. 

The word buratto refers to both this technique, in which fine thread, in this case linen, is stitched onto a woven net-like ground, as well as to the ground fabric itself. We have come across other names to describe this type of very fine needlework – punto tirato and punto sfilato.

Most notably, our example is almost identical, and similar in its dimensions, to a Buratto panel in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum:

Date: 16th century  Culture: Italian, possibly Sardinia
Medium: Embroidered net, buratto
Dimensions: L. 32 x W. 10½ inches Classification: Textiles-Laces
Credit Line: Gift of Mrs. J. Boorman Johnstone, 1906
Accession Number: 06.550

Both our Buratto and that in the Met Museum depict nearly identical, highly complex and fascinating pictorial scenes. Shown below is our example’s depiction of stylized people, likely in battle, standing along the upper register with bows, arrows and spears.

Some are on horseback and there are also falconers on horseback. Two fallen men are shown horizontal below this line of warriors and above each castle. The castles have crenelated towers and rooftops, and several men stand guard while surrounded by ships (left). Wording is stitched at the top of the masts of the largest ships (right).

A large central female figure dominates the composition. She wears a Christian headpiece that is flanked by angels.

Below are a series of side by side comparisons between our piece (left) and The MET Museum’s (right) which indicate their similarities. These may have been stitched at the same time or by the same needleworker or needleworkers.

Presenting similar motifs to ours and the MET’s, is a Buratto found at The Rundāle Palace Museum in Italy, featured below.

Rundāle Palace Museum, Italy, 17th century. Motifs: palace, ship, fantasy lions
11 x 42 cm  |  Published: Mick Fouriscot. Le secret des dentelles II. Paris, 2000

Another remarkably similar example is documented as Plate XLII in Needlework Through the Ages by Mrs. Mary Symonds Antrobus (Hodder & Stoughton LTD., London 1928) (left), confirming the 16^th century Italian origin. It shares the same scene and specific elements and the publication references a companion piece in the Victoria and Albert Museum in London. Mrs. Antrobus writes that the central figure may represent the Virgin Mary. These may have been made as frontal-pieces, perhaps for altar cloths. A reprint copy of this book will accompany our Buratto.

A pattern book, Il burato, Libro de recami [The Buratto, Book of Embroideries], by Alessandro Paganini, circa 1527 (right), was published at the height of the popularity of this technique and is referenced by Jeanine Robertson in various sources, including two articles in Piecework Magazine (Nov/Dec 2010). 

Ms. Robertson has researched and written about historic Buratto needlework, which was favored by Catherine de’ Medici (1519-1589), as well as how it could be reproduced today.

Our Buratto, along with the other known examples, was originally meant to be viewed from both sides; the imagery and lettering mirror each other. We photographed the reverse prior to mounting and this indicates very clearly that it is beautifully finished on both sides.

verso image of buratto

Translating the wording on this piece has been perhaps the most difficult detail to ascertain. Jesús Velasco, Yale University, Department Chair, Augustus R. Street, Professor of Spanish & Portuguese and Comparative Literature, was kind enough to offer some insight. He reasoned that the words inscribed use characters from the Berber language’s Amazigh/Imazighen alphabet. Velasco continues, “This does not mean that text is conveyed in 16th-century Amazigh language, as it may be in Sardinian. There is ample Amazigh influence in Sardinia, and Sardinian is a rare Romance language.” If the Amazigh alphabet was used to write in the Sardinian language, this may explain why some characters such as the distinctive “M” and “r” characters are not found in Amazigh alphabet, resulting in a literal translation that continues to prove difficult.   

We first came to know of this Buratto many years ago when it was in an important collection in England. While we have done substantial historical research on this piece and others greatly like it, as described above, there still remain questions. We welcome any information that our readers may contribute to expand our knowledge of this very interesting form. 

To obtain high resolution images of our Buratto and its verso, please email us at mailbox@finkelantiques.com

Worked in linen on linen, it is in remarkably excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a fine black frame with a gold leaf inner edge with UV Filter glass.     

Please contact us with interest or questions.             

Amy Finkel

215-627-7797
 

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston

The Roberts Family Gallery

April 2, 2011, through August 20, 2011
 

Curator, Pamela Parmal
 

Ann Peartree, American, born in Boston (1722-1744); Embroidered picture, Massachusetts, Boston, 1739; Plain weave linen embroidered with wool Gift of Elsie T. Friedman, 59.22		possibly Katherine Green, American, born in Boston, (1731-1777); Embroidered picture, Massachusetts, Boston, about 1745; Plain weave linen embroidered with wool and silk; Gift of Maxim Karolik, 44.750

The embroideries of colonial Boston girls and women have long been treasured family possessions and are now much sought after by collectors. The charm and craftsmanship of the Adam and Eve samplers, pastoral pictures with leaping stags and galloping hunters, as well as crewelwork bed hangings and delicately embroidered baby caps bring to mind a warm domesticity; however, as a group they also reveal much about the lives of Boston women and their role within colonial society. This is the second in a series of three exhibitions that focus on the embroideries of colonial Boston–samplers, needlework pictures and domestic textiles–revealing the role of embroidery in the education of women, in their domestic lives, and as an important source of household income.

Pictorial Embroideries

As the wealth of Bostonians increased during the eighteenth century, many families had the resources that allowed their daughters to take classes in the genteel accomplishments of music, dancing, and advanced needlework. In their needlework classes, girls completed complex samplers, and then moved on to embroidered pictures, overmantels, and coats of arms that became cherished family possessions.  The second rotation will feature these advanced schoolgirl embroideries.

Eunice Bourne, American, born in Barnstable (1732-about 1775); Overmantel, Massachusetts (Boston), about 1748;
Plain weave linen embroidered with silk and wool; Seth K. Sweetser Fund, 21.2233

English schoolgirls embroidered pictures during the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century and, while a few pictures worked by New England girls are known from this earlier period, they became more widely popular by the middle of the eighteenth century. Some Boston merchants imported pre-drawn canvases from London, while several enterprising Boston teachers, embroiderers, and artists began drawing their own pictures competing with the British imports. Susannah Condy advertised the sale of canvases drawn by herself and cheaper than those from London in 1742. Other artistic hands can be identified and will be featured in the exhibition. One canvas is even signed by Bostonian Sarah Moorhead, the wife of Rev. John Moorhead, who taught drawing, japanning, and painting on glass.

John Singleton Copley, American (1738-1815) Portrait of schoolmistress Elizabeth Murray, Massachusetts, Boston, 1769; Oil on canvas Gift of Joseph W. R. Rogers and Mary C.  Rogers, 42.463		Sarah Henshaw, American, born in Boston (1736-1822); Henshaw and Bill Coat of Arms, Massachusetts, Boston, about 1748; Silk satin embroidered with silk and metallic thread; Lent John A. and Judith C. Herdeg

While canvaswork pictures and coats of arms predominated during the middle of the century, embroidery on silk became more fashionable during later half. Silk embroideries often incorporated metallic yarns making these glowing and glittering pictures more emblematic of a family’s wealth and social position. Elizabeth Murray, a Boston schoolteacher and milliner, whose portrait by John Singleton Copley will be featured in the show, is associated with one of the earliest group of silk embroideries from Boston and several worked by her student Sarah Henshaw, will be included in the show. Murray’s protégés Janet Day and the Cummings sisters continued the tradition and exceptional work by their students survives including the silk overmantel by Sarah Derby of Salem on loan from the Winterthur Museum.

Sarah Derby, American, born in Salem (1747-1774); Overmantel, Massachusetts, Boston, about 1765;
Silk plain weave embroidered with silk, gouache; Winterthur Museum, Bequest of Henry Francis Dupont

I am greatly fortunate to have had Betty Ring as a teacher and a mentor. Betty instilled in me an approach to the field of American samplers and schoolgirl needlework that was both unique and invaluable, and she taught me important lessons that extended beyond the material which she loved. Over a period of almost 20 years, beginning in the mid-1980s, I was in constant communication with Betty, and fortunately preserved most of the letters she sent to me. Some are typewritten and some are handwritten, these letters are Betty’s legacy to me. Reviewing them recently has reminded me how important she was to my education over those many years; the detailed and, needless-to-say, very interesting information that she graciously provided was extraordinary. Of course, these letters also demonstrate the energy and exceptional scholarship which she brought to this field and her unselfish willingness to share information with others.

In one particular letter Betty provided me with many specifics as a follow-up to a delightful two day working visit to my shop, and she ended the letter by graciously thanking me for my time. She indicated how much she had enjoyed seeing all of the interesting material that I had; she then, most importantly, wrote the following, providing insight into her remarkable passion:

“American samplers are an ever-unfolding field filled with endless surprises – I can never tire of it!”

We are all very fortunate that Betty felt as strongly as she did about her field of interest, and that she has been able to devote so many years to collecting, researching and writing.

One of the themes that emerge from the years of correspondence is the deep and abiding commitment she made to her scholarship. Within one letter she demonstrated her diligence and pursuit of knowledge as follows:

“I’m finally back inHoustonwith unpacked boxes and crates of samplers and silk embroideries sitting around while I work frantically to try to revise my book. The days and nights all seem to run together because I almost never leave this desk!”

Betty’s letters and life indicate that she hasn’t had enough time to complete all that she wished to achieve, even though all who know her are astounded at how much she has accomplished. She frequently spoke and wrote about her desire to research, analyze and write a great deal more:

“Actually, I had so much to work on that I didn’t manage to get to all of it and would love to have had at least two more days to spend at the Genealogical Society.”

“I’m not satisfied with what little I learned about [a certain group of 18^th century samplers] when I was in Philadelphia not long ago, but time ran out before I could think of a new approach. There is so much more I hope to do.”

Betty constantly sought to obtain new information – asking me in one letter for a copy of a photo of a specific sampler because she never had seen such an example before and wanted to include it in a footnote in her book. I was always deeply flattered when I could add to her unusually comprehensive files.

For a person who demonstrated such encyclopedic knowledge of the field, her humility was a lesson worth learning. For example, when discussing an exciting new discovery and trying to establish the genealogy of the maker, she wrote to me as follows:

“It seems that every day I know less than I knew the day before!! Samplers are so vast in number and endless in variety, and after all of these years, I seemed to have barely scratched the surface of their history. If I come across any new clues about this piece, I will let you know.”

How remarkable for someone with Betty’s vast knowledge to be so humble about her position and accomplishments. Throughout the many years of our friendship, I came to understand that it was this humility that drove her to learn more and more and to have seemingly inexhaustible energy in her pursuit of knowledge. Betty evidenced a constant willingness to help others unravel the mystery of a sampler, samplermaker, teacher, school or group of schoolgirl work.

And her correspondence also indicates other characteristics worth noting.

While our letters related almost exclusively to the pursuit of information about a particular needleworker or sampler, a specific exhibition or publication, she would occasionally diverge from these subjects. One communication ended with the comment “I have all of my five sons here right now so I must stop.”  We in the field who have revered her as a scholar could forget that she is a devoted wife and mother, and that she was deeply involved with her family. In conversation, Betty and I frequently covered the details of her large family.

I have a handwritten note in which she described to me her upcoming plans for a research trip to thePhiladelphiaregion, and in which she also found the time to write about the beauty of her belovedTexas:

“I’ve just driven home from my farm house where the hills and dales are covered with every variety ofTexaswildflowers – just a gorgeous spring day – trees all fully foliated now.”

Betty has always been extraordinarily kind and willing to acknowledge and praise others. In a letter discussing a particular white-workPhiladelphiasampler, she praised the renowned Scottish needlework scholar who had helped her in her pursuit of the understanding of this complicated technique:

“Margaret Swain is such a wonderful person and always so generous with her knowledge, which is vast. She was marvelous about helping me sort out the many different descriptions of ‘Dresdenwork’ for my book.”

Those same words could be said about Betty Ring, a wonderful person who has always been so generous with her knowledge and whose knowledge is vast.

Betty and Amy at a dinner, in 1993, honoring the publication of Betty's new books: Girlhood Embroidery

It is with sadness that we share news of the death of Susan B. Swan, retired long-time curator at Winterthur Museum. Her tenure as curator at Winterthur was marked by an enormous growth in the understanding and appreciation of American schoolgirl needlework. Sue’s contribution to the scholarship in this field and the important acquisitions made by the Museum under her leadership are widely recognized.

Sue was a mentor to many and I am very fortunate to have been one of them. Beginning in the early 1980s I learned a great deal from Sue - about American schoolgirl samplers and about the needlework education received by 18th and early 19th century girls and young ladies. Sue was quick to share her knowledge and did so with patience and a ready smile. I want to record my gratitude to Sue and to Winterthur and will seed a purchase fund in her memory with the hope that others will contribute. Linda Eaton, Curator of Textiles at Winterthur, sent me the following remarks. Information regarding this memorial fund appears at the conclusion.

We are very sad to let you know that Sue Swan passed away on June 27, 2010.

Susan Burrows Swan, a native of Ohio, graduated from Ohio State University with a B.S. in home economics, specializing in textile and clothing design. She took graduate courses at the University of Delaware and twice attended programs offered by the Attingham Trust in England. Sue began her career at Winterthur Museum in 1961 as a senior guide, worked as a registrar from 1970, and became the curator in charge of textiles and needlework in 1979. She retired on June 30, 1991.

Sue authored or co-authored several books and numerous articles on needlework. Her books include Plain & Fancy: American Women and their Needlework (New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1977; a revised edition was published in 1995 by Curious Works Press), A Winterthur Guide to American Needlework (New York: Crown Publishers, 1976), and, with Mary Taylor Landon, American Crewelwork (New York: Macmillan, 1970). She also curated or co-curated several exhibitions highlighting collection objects at Winterthur, including one on the arts of the Pennsylvania Germans and another on mourning customs. Sue taught in the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture (WPEAC), offered workshops for the Embroiderers’ Guild of America, and lectured widely at museums and historical societies throughout the United States.

Sue was a member of Phi Upsilon Omicron, the Needle & Bobbin Club, the New York Rug Society, and the American Ceramic Circle. She received an alumnae achievement award from Kappa Kappa Gamma sorority and served on the sorority’s museum board. She was married to L. Delmar Swan, who worked for the Dupont Company; they had two sons.

Memorial gifts are being accepted in Sue’s memory to purchase a piece of needlework for the Winterthur collection. If you wish to contribute you can do so online at Winterthur’s website (www.winterthur.org). Click on “Contribute” then “give now” and indicate that your donation is in memory of Sue. You may also contribute by contacting Winterthur’s Development Department at 302.888.4673.

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.

We thought that today's sampler collectors would enjoy the following article, which was written by Walter A. Dyer and appeared in the magazine Country Life in America in April, 1916. Here is scanned copy of the original, with its illustrations of two samplers and one silk embroidery that are owned by the Metropolitan Museum . We hope that he, as a great admirer of this field, would be pleased to share his knowledge, 93 years after it was written.

Walter Alden Dyer (1878-1943) was an American author and journalist. He graduated from Amherst College in 1900. A year later, he joined the staff of the Springfield Union as an editor. He was managing editor of the magazine Country Life in America  from 1906 to 1914 and wrote a column entitled “The Collector's Corner Cupboard.” Dyer wrote widely about antiques, furniture and decorative arts; his books included  The Lure of the Antique (1910), Creators of Decorative Styles (1917) and Handbook of Furniture Styles (1918). He also wrote children’s books, dog books and novels.

An extraordinary exhibition of Scottish samplers, all of them on loan from the equally extraordinary collection of American collector, Leslie B. Durst, opened at the National Museum Scotland on October 26, 2018; it will remain on view until April 21, 2019. I was fortunate enough to be invited to attend the opening and I encourage sampler collectors, scholars and enthusiasts from near and far to travel to Edinburgh to spend time at this outstanding exhibition. The collection of Ms. Durst is considered to be the most significant private collection in the world; the website antiquesamplers.org shares a great number of the samplers from this collection which is known for its highly important American, English and Scottish examples.

Scottish samplers are almost always signed and frequently the names of the samplermakers' parents are included within the stitching; notably Scottish women often retained their names after marriage and this serves as a great help when researching and identifying samplermakers. Initials of other family members stitched on the samplers can also be extensive, allowing for further genealogical study. The research conducted by Ms. Durst and her team over decades is very impressive in both its depth and breadth. The family histories are fascinating and the exhibition catalogue, written by museum curator Helen Wyld, includes many captivating stories of family ties along with histories of the teachers and schools, as many samplermakers also credited their schools and instructresses directly on their samplers, too. The catalogue will serve as a highly valuable resource for years to come.

The exhibition includes 75 samplers made from 1732 to 1877. The social histories of the samplermakers range widely. One young lady is from a titled family - Dorothea Clark, whose 1732 sampler is considered highly significant – and another, Agnes Douglass, worked her modest little sampler in 1839 while attending Dr Bell’s School in Aberdeen, a school that provided education to the poorest of students. Remarkably, a group of twelve samplers from generations of the Swan family of Fife between 1748 and 1790, has remained together for these many years and is included in the exhibition. And to note, one American sampler is exhibited: it was made by Catharine McPherson in 1836 in a settlement populated primarily by Scottish people in Monroe County, New York where her Scottish-born parents resided after they emigrated. Catharine’s sampler bears a strong resemblance to samplers made in Scotland and it’s likely that her teacher was from Scotland, as well.

A study of the samplers reveals depictions of a wonderful assortment of unusual visual images: double-hemisphere maps of the world, a multiplication table, fully rigged sailing ships and unusual animals such as a pair of zebras and a lion. Coats of arms are well represented, too, and include that of Great Britain, those of various cities and families and even that of Edinburgh’s Company of Fleshers, as butchers were then known. Biblical scenes such as the sacrifice of Isaac, Elijah feeding the Ravens, the Spies of Canaan and, of course, Adam and Eve are included. Scottish schoolgirls are renowned for including outstanding architectural depictions within their needlework and many samplers exhibited include prominently featured renderings: specific castles, a royal infirmary, an orphan hospital, town halls, bridges and a great number of large manor houses.

Some of the samplers that were made in the middle of the 19^th century have interesting variation in the materials used – one sampler that was worked in Fife, circa 1860 is worked on a beautiful red-dyed wool and another, made in 1848 in Glasgow, is worked in tiny glass beads which form all of the lettering and pictorial images as well as the house, flower baskets, trees and birds.

This exhibition has received considerable coverage in the press, both articles (this one in the Scottish Field) and BBC broadcasts about the exhibition including interviews with Ms. Durst (beginning at 19:30 of the full two-hour show) and curator, Helen Wyld.

The exhibition catalogue includes color images along with specifics about each sampler, every samplermaker and many teachers and schools. It is available from the museum and we have a handful, as well, available for sale. A conference at the museum is scheduled for March 21, 2019 offering a day of lectures by curators and scholars in the field. More information will be available on their website.

*Unless otherwise noted, credit for above photos is courtesy of M. Finkel & Daughter, Phila PA.