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Jane Walton, Westtown School, Chester County, Pennsylvania, 18154Collectors of Quaker school needlework will find much to admire in the work of Jane Walton, a newly discovered Westtown School sampler. This large and beautifully stitched sampler epitomizes the aesthetic of needlework produced at Westtown (aka Weston) School in the early years of the nineteenth century. A large scale alphabet, worked in the block-letter Quaker style, dominates the top of the sampler and the bottom of it includes quarter and half geometric medallions which are also classic Quaker motifs. All of the needlework is formed of extremely precise stitches.Jane was older than the majority of Westtown%u2019s students when she was admitted to the school on 8 month, 12 day, 1815, as student #1388, according Westtown archivist, Mary Brooks. Her account at the school was in her own name and records indicate that her father, Daniel Walton, was deceased. Jane was born in 1789, the oldest of Daniel and Martha (Foulke Green) Walton%u2019s five children. The Walton family lived in Richland, northern Bucks County, Pennsylvania and belonged to the Richland Monthly Meeting, an early meetinghouse established in 1742. Extensive Friends%u2019 records and published accounts (Early Friends Families of Upper Bucks County by Clarence V. Roberts) tell us much about this family and indicate that Jane married widower Samuel Roberts (1782-1856), a member of the same Meeting. They became the parents of four children. Jane died in 1865 and her sampler remained in the family for many generations. Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in excellent condition with the exception of the small area at the top of the letter K, along the upper edge. According to the family, the unframed sampler was nibbled at by a mouse. Now conservation mounted, the sampler is in a cherry frame with an outer bead.Sampler size: 18%u00bd%u201d x 14%u201d Frame size: 22%u00bd%u201d x 18%u201d Price: $6800.