Charlotte Sweet

An endearing sampler, this was made by Charlotte Sweet, age 10 and living in Manlius, a town outside of Syracuse, Onondaga County, New York. She signed it within two fully-worked horizontal tablets in which she also specified the initials of her teacher, GMH. Featuring primarily alphabets, Charlotte also included a basket of fruit and two pine trees, surrounding it with a very good border of buds and leaves on a rhythmic vine. 

The Sweet family is very well documented in Re-Union of the Sons and Daughters of the Old Town of Pompey … A History of the Town, Reminiscences and Biographical Sketches of its Early Inhabitants (Pompey, 1875), Pompey being the town just south of Manlius. The Sweet family in America began with Mary Sweet, a widow with three children who sailed from England and settled in Rhode Island in 1636. 

Charlotte’s grandfather was Timothy Sweet (1753-1757), who enlisted at the dawn of the Revolutionary War and was captured by the British and imprisoned at one of the Sugar House Prisons in New York. The published account of his war years includes much more information, and photocopies accompany the sampler. In 1794, he and his wife, Eunice Woodworth, removed to Onondaga County.

Charlotte was born on July 31, 1826, to Anson and Charlotte (Seeley) Sweet. Anson was a successful farmer, again according to the published account which contains further specifics. In 1850, Charlotte married Hon. George Goundry Munger (1828-1895), a lawyer from Rochester. They had 5 daughters and after George passed away, Charlotte removed to New Haven where the 1898 City Directory shows her living at 361 George Street. She died in 1910 and is buried at the Central Buying Grounds in Hamden. 

The sampler was worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a molded and black painted frame.