Olivia Ann Hewes

This delightful and well-documented 1829 sampler offers a fine verse and handsome composition within a graphic border. The maker was Olivia Ann Hewes, age 11, who lived in Foxborough and was likely attending school in Newton, Massachusetts, a town seven miles west of Boston and connected then by nine bridges that crossed the Charles River. 

Foxborough is several miles south of Newton and Olivia was born there on February 21, 1818 to a carpenter, Rufus Mann Hewes, and his wife Densey (Williams) Hewes. Records indicate that her grandfather, John Hewes (1750-1831), was from Newton and that he fought in the Revolutionary War. The Newton connection likely explains why Olivia was educated there and she may have lived with relatives at the time. 

Olivia stitched a verse that was widely published in the period. She centered it between two striped pots from which a strawberry plant grows. Note the use of many hearts, four in the four corners and others incorporated into the alphabets. 

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