Susan Porter,

A very fine and large sampler, this is signed, "Susan Porter's Sampler / Fauquier County Virginia / November 21st AD 1811.” Susan Porter was the daughter of Samuel Porter, Jr (1780-1836) and Mary Bird (Withers) Porter (1776-1831) of Warrenton, Fauquier County, Virginia. The Porter family roots in Virginia extend back to Susan’s 4x great-grandfather, Jacob Porter, who was born in England and died in Virginia. Susan’s year of birth was likely 1803, which would have made her very young when she made this sampler. We know that she married in 1819, when she was likely 16 and that marriage on February 22 is recorded in Virginia Compiled Marriages 1740-1850. Her husband was Samuel Blackwell (1791-1853) and the first of their eight children was born the year they married. By 1850, Susan and Samuel removed to Illinois, settling in Hillsboro, Montgomery County. They both died there in 1853. 

The sampler descended to their daughter Mariah Elizabeth Blackwell (1834-1916) and thence to females in each generation until just recently. 

The quality of the work is excellent - for example the horizontal band of strawberries was done in the queen's stitch, which takes great skill. The couplet worked in pale pink reads, "Auspicious Hope in thy sweet garden grow / Wreaths for each toil a charm for every woe," which was written by British poet, Thomas Campbell (1777-1844) and published in 1799.

Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in excellent condition with a very few stitches missing from the two letters in the uppermost alphabet. It has been conservation mounted and is in a fine mahogany frame.

photo of reverse