Deborah Burton

This is a fine, little sampler with alphabets, bands of flowers and two outstanding squares of queen's-stitch geometric motifs. The samplermaker signed it, “Deborah Burton 1803” and “DB Her Work” below that. 

Deborah was born August 17, 1790, into a Quaker family in Bristol, Bucks Co., Pennsylvania. Her parents, Anthony Burton (1758-1838) and Jane Gregg (1762-1819), were married at a Quaker Meeting in Hunterdon County, New Jersey in 1781. 

In 1816, Deborah married Benjamin Webster at Fallsington, in Bucks County, Pennsylvania. They had two children, and Deborah died young, in 1821.

Information about the family is published in History of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, vol. III, published in 1908. The ancestry of the family is traced back to Anthony Burton, the emigrant ancestor, a native of England who was among the earliest settlers of Bristol township where he owned land. “His name appears among those who registered the “ear marks” for their cattle in the old book kept for that purpose … in 1684.”

The sampler descended in the family for many years and was shown in a loan exhibition of Quaker samplers in 1995 at the Friends Arch Street Meeting in Philadelphia. 

Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a period mahogany frame.