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6Roxana Saunders, Salem, New Hampshire, 1817Lydia Ann Griffith, East Nottingham School, Cecil Co., MD, 1835 .This beautifully stitched sampler offer excellent composition and strong aesthetic appeal. Made by Roxana Saunders of southern New Hampshire in 1817, it features a central portrayal of an arrangement of fruit set within, quite remarkably, a solidly stitched rectangle. The plump fruit and accompanying leaves and tendrils are shaded and outlined nicely and Roxana stitched her alphabets and numerical progressions along the top. The border frames the work well and presents small flowers in each corner and narrow lines of double sawtooths at the outer edges.Roxana was born to Ebenezer and Martha Stickney who were married in 1786 in Billerica, Middlesex, Massachusetts, where they remained for some years and had at least their first three children before moving to Salem, New Hampshire. Roxana was the sixth of their eleven children, born in 1796. Three years after working her sampler Roxana married James Betton Whitaker of Salem, and they removed to Windham, a town just northwest of Salem. He was a shoemaker, though an active farmer as well. Together they had seven children before his death in 1867. The 1870 census records show Roxana living with her son Moses, likely until her death in 1881.Her fine sampler was worked in silk on linen, and remains in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted into a 19th century mahogany frame with line inlay.Sampler size: 16%u00bd%u201d x 20%u00bd%u201d Frame size: 19%u00be%u201d x 23%u00be%u201d Price: $5800.The outstanding book, A Maryland Schoolgirl Sampling: Girlhood Embroidery 1738 %u2013 1860, by Gloria Seaman Allen (Maryland Historical Society, 2007) is notable for its depth and breadth and it has become an invaluable resource for collectors and scholars. The discovery of a sampler made at a Maryland school previously unknown to Dr. Allen would be difficult to imagine. Therefore, we are delighted to have discovered this splendid sampler made by Lydia Ann Griffith at the East Nottingham School of Cecil County, Maryland; an exceptional sampler worked at a school, until now, undocumented. Dr. Allen has commented on our Griffith sampler as follows, %u201cThis bold sampler is the first known to document the teaching of needlework at a Quaker school in Cecil County that was probably associated with the East Nottingham Meeting, also known as Brick Meeting. Responding to the appeal of the Philadelphia Annual Meeting, of which Nottingham formed a part, a school house was erected near the meeting house about 1780 and continued in operation until 1845 when the public school system was inaugurated.%u201d(continued on the next page)