Page 11 - Demo

7Lydia Ann Griffith, East Nottingham School, Cecil County, Maryland, 1835 (cont.)Lydia%u2019s sampler features an outstanding, large scale floral arrangement in a two-handled vase sitting on a stepped and shaded base. Quaker sampler motifs used by Lydia include the pairs of birds, sprays of lilies and baskets of fruit. These motifs, the central flowers in vase and the appealing and unusual border of grape bunches with accompanying leaves and tendrilling vines, indicate the high level of the education in the needle arts that was taught at East Nottingham School.The Griffith family belonged to Brick Meeting House, a Society of Friends Meeting in northern Maryland that was founded in 1702 on land set aside by William Penn for a Commons and Meeting House. Nathan and Mary (Kirk) Griffith were married there in 1818. Lydia was the oldest child of their five children, born on June 17, 1819. Nathan came to Cecil County from Chester County, Pennsylvania with his family when he was two years old. He became a farmer and %u201cmaster shoemaker%u201d and served the town as Collector of Taxes and School Commissioner. According to his obituary published in the April 13, 1889 Cecil Whig (the local newspaper founded in 1841), Nathan was a man of %u201cpleasant disposition, strictest integrity and was respected by all who knew him.%u201d Lydia married Clemson Brown (1818-1860) in 1844 and they became the parents of six children born between 1845 and 1855.Lydia died in 1899; she and family members are all buried in Friends Cemetery of the Brick Friends Meeting House. Information came from Births, Deaths and Marriages of the Nottingham Quakers 1680 %u2013 1899 by Alice L. Beard (Westminster, MD, 2001). One of the documents that shed further light on this family is the will of Lydia%u2019s aunt, Ann Kirk (1797-1886), a Quaker lady who remained single and, along with her sister, Hannah, manufactured carpets. Lydia Ann Brown and her daughters Mary and Elizabeth are named as beneficiaries, as are other Kirk and Griffith family members. We also have cop,ies of the marriage certificate of Nathan and Mary and that of Clemson and Lydia Ann and many other Friends records pertaining to the family.The sampler was worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mount,ed and is in a figured maple and cherry frame.Sampler size: 19%u00be%u201d x 17%u00bd%u201d Frame size: 23%u00be%u201d x 21%u00bd%u201d Price: $18,000.As an additional note of interest to sampler enthusiasts, Dr. Allen%u2019s much-anticipated next book, Columbia%u2019s Daughters: Girlhood Embroidery from the District of Columbia is due out in early November of this year.