Page 13 - Demo

9Elizabeth Virdin, Kent County, Delaware, 1808Delaware samplers exist in far fewer numbers than those from the other mid-Atlantic states, and we are pleased to be able to offer this splendid Quaker motif and verse sampler worked by Elizabeth Virdin, a young lady from a prominent Kent County family. Elizabeth%u2019s great-grandfather, John Virdin, was born in England and by 1732 had acquired land in Murderkill Hundred, Kent County, Delaware. Elizabeth was born on September 28, 1795, the daughter of John and Sarah (Purdin) Virdin; the family lived south of Dover.Elizabeth must have attended a Quaker school where she learned to work her sampler as it exhibits the composition and specific motifs that were taught at other Quaker schools in Pennsylvania, New Jersey and Delaware in the first decades of the 19th century. It seems likely that the school that Elizabeth attended was associated with Duck Creek Monthly Meeting, the Society of Friends meeting that was organized in 1705 near Smyrna. In the section entitled Quaker Samplers in America, vol II, of Girlhood Embroidery, Betty Ring illustrates samplers with the precise Quaker elements that were demonstrated by Elizabeth Virdin, including the two soaring bluebirds just beneath the Extract verse. This verse was from a poem published in Philadelphia in 1787, in a volume entitled, Miscellanies, Moral and Instructive in Prose and Verse; Collected from Various Authors for the Use of Schools, and Improvement of Young Persons of Both Sexes, and it has been documented on other American samplers. In 1815, twenty-year-old Elizabeth Virdin married William Harrington and they had one child, a daughter, Mary Harrington, who was born in 1832. Elizabeth died in 1842 and her sampler descended in the family for many generations until just recently, and is accompanied by a documented line of descent. Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a cherry beveled frame with wide outer bead.Sampler size: 20%u00bd%u201d x 17%u201d Frame size: 25%u00be%u201d x 21%u00bc%u201d Price: $14,500.