American Samplers 1921

American Samplers

1921

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American Samplers

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Copyright 1921 by Massachusetts Society of the Colonial Dames of America

image page 3
Loara Standish's Sampler, Plymouth, Mass. Cir. 1640
Pilgrim Hall, Plymout
Plate presented by Mrs. William L. McKee

page 4 Title Plate
AMERICAN SAMPLERS
BY
ETHEL STANWOOD BOLTON
and EVA JOHNSTON COE
THE MASSACHUSETTS SOCIETY OF THE
COLONIAL DAMES OF AMERICA ... 1921

pg 5
THOMAS TODD COMPANY
... PRINTER ...
14 BEACON STREET, BOSTON, MASS.

image pg 6
PLATE I
ANNE GOWER'S SAMPLER. Salem, Mass. About 1610
Owned by the Essex Institute

pg 7
PREFATORY NOTE

In preserving the memory of our ancestors, their domestic virtues
have been scantily recorded, a neglect which demands attention.
Unable to answer many inquiries for publications on early American
needlework, the Massachusetts Society of the Colonial Dames
took upon itself the task of remedying in part this neglect. Considering
samplers to be the primary basis and training school of American
needlework in the early days of the Nation, our associates have collected
materials and discussed needlework in this volume.

With the wish to make this work national and not local, an appeal
for aid was made to our sister societies, which brought prompt and
generous response. Through their cooperation, this volume contains
contributions from many of the societies of the Colonial Dames in the
United States and from many interested friends. The New Jersey
Society, through its chairman, Mrs. Trueman Clayton, has furnished
the largest number of descriptions outside of Massachusetts. Mrs.
Clayton worked untiringly, and her descriptions were so clear, not
only in matter but in chirography, that they were a deligt to all who
used them.

The late Mrs. T. Harrison Garret, of Baltimore, had gathered for
the Maryland Dames more than a hundred records of samplers from
that state, which were most welcom, as our collection of Southern
samplers was somewhat meager. The Connecticut and Kansas Societies,
and many others, have responded to the best of their ability.

Mrs. Cyrus Walker, of California, spent one of her summers in
northern Maine, collecting and photographing the samplers she found
there.

In March, 1920, the Rhode Island Historical Society arranged an
exhibit of samplers, partly from a local interest in such things and
partly to aid in the preparation of this book. It was under the direction
of the librarian, Howard M. Chapin, Esq., of Providence, assisted
by a committee of the Society. It was a most successful affair, and
brought together nearly three hundred samplers which would not
otherwise have come to our notice. Mrs. Powel, the acting president
of the Colonial Dames of Rhode Island, contributed to the book descriptions
of all the samplers in the exhibition.

In our own Society, Mrs. Edwin A. Daniels of Boston, collected
a very large number of descriptions.

Mrs. Henry E. Coe, of New York, who has a wonderful collection
of her own, has added a very large number of descriptions, enhanced
by pictures taken with her kodak. Many friends have contributed
pictures, and to them our thanks are due. The Committee wishes that
it could reproduce in the book many more pictures of very real interest
which it has in its archives; but it was felt, in choosing the illustrations,
that the pictures must be either typical or necessary to bring out some
point under discussion. Therefore, those only have been chosen which
exhibit American types or are interesting historically.

It is believed that there are here reproduced examples of most
of the various stitches and model patterns used in such needlework.
While many American samplers contain only the alphabet and
numerals, with added moral mottoes, yet others display such sense of
artistic feeling and tasteful ornamentation as merit attention.

The book is based upon some twenty-five hundred descritions of
samplers which have been collected by the Committee and its friends
during the last five years. We have also got together nearly four hundred
pictures of samplers that we felt might be especeially interesting.
In addition, many other samplers have been seen. The Committee
believes that every book on needlework, ancient and modern, has been
searched in the hope of finding material. Of course, there are many
samplers that are not recorded here, for until one begins the search,
it is impossible to realize how busy the fingers of our young ancestresses
were. We do feel, however, that we have collected enough to
have a good basis for our assertions.

In order to increase the value of this monograph, it seemed wise
to focus attention on that period in which sampler work was at its best,
and no samplers have been included of later date than 1880.

image pg 9
PLATE II
MARY HOLLINGWORTH'S SAMPLER. Salem, Mass. Cir. 1665
Owned by the Essex Institute

image pg 10
PLATE III
SARAH LORD'S SAMPLER 1668
Owned by Mrs. Thoma Sinnickson, Jr.

pg 11
Although this volume comprises the work of many, the successful
consummation of the plan is due to the administrative ability, enthusiasm,
and ready sympathy of Mrs. Barrett Wendell, President of the
Massachusetts Society of Colonial Dames
MARGARET WOODBRIDGE CUSHING,
For the Committee.

Newburyport, Massachusetts,
December, 1920.
MARGARET WOODBRIDGE CUSHING
ETHEL STANWOOD BOLTON
GEORGIANNA WEST PERRY
---------------------------------------------
"He errs who thinks those hands were set
All spinster-like and cold
Who spelt a scarlet alphabet,
And birds of blue and gold,
And made immortal garden plots
Of daisies and forget-me-nots.
"The bodkins wove an even pace,
Yet these are lyrics too,
Breathing of spectral lawn and lace,
Old ardors to renew;
For in the corners love would keep
His fold among the little sheep."
John Drinkwater, "Samplers."

pg 12
CONTENTS
PREFATORY NOTE - III
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS - VII
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SAMPLERS - 1
REGISTER OF SAMPLERS, 1600 - 1700 - 9
EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SAMPLERS - 10
REGISTER OF SAMPLERS, 1700 - 1799 - 29
NINETEENTH CENTURY SAMPLERS - 90
REGISTER OF SAMPLERS, 1800 - 1830 - 121
SAMPLER VERSE, Containing a Letter from Barrett Wendell, Esq. - 247
AN ANTHOLOGY OF SAMPLER VERSE, 1610 - 1830 - 255
SCHOOLS AND SCHOOLMISTRESSES - 355
A LIST OF EARLY SCHOOLS - 382
MATERIALS, DESIGNS, STITCHES - 388
EMBROIDERED HERALDRY - 399
REGISTER OF EMBROIDERED ARMS - 403
INDEX - 409

image pg 13
PLATE IV
ISABELLA ERCY'S SAMPLER 1675
Owned by Daniel ?????? {scan is incomplete}

pg 14
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
Cover. Sarah Bancroft's Sampler
Frontispiece. Loara Standish's Sampler
(Colored)
Plate I. Anne Gower's Sampler
Plate II. Mary Hollingsworth's Sampler
Plate III. Sarah Lord's Sampler
Plate IV. Isabella Ercy's Sampler
Plate V. Elizabeth Robert's lace sampler
Plate VI. Elizabeth Robert's Sampler
(Colored)
Plate VII. Portrait of Elizabeth Robert
Plate VIII. Miles Fletwod Abigal Fletwood
Plate IX. Mary Hudson's Sampler
Plate X. Grace Toy's Sampler
Plate XI. Mary Daintery's Sampler
Plate XII. Mary or Martha Bulyn's Sampler
Plate XIII. Katherine Holden's Sampler
Plate XIV. Hannah Trecothick's Sampler
Plate XV. Mariah Deavenport's Sampler
Mary Parker's Sampler
Plate XVI. Ruth Haskell's Sampler
Plate XVII. Mary Ellis's Sampler
Plate XVIII. Elizabeth Pecker's Sampler
Plate XIX. Dorothy Lynde's Sampler
(Colored)
Plate XX. Mary Webb's Sampler
Plate XXI. Catherine Van Schalck's Sampler
Plate XXII. Sally Rea's Sampler
Plate XXIII. Margare Calef's Sampler
Plate XXIV. Hannah Johnson's Sampler
Plate XXV. Grace Welsh's Sampler
Plate XXVI. Abigail Mears's Sampler
Plate XXVII. Betsy Adams's Sampler
Plate XXVIII. Sampler by an Unknown Girl
Plate XXIX. Frances Brenton's Sampler
Plate XXX. John Mason's Sampler
Plate XXXI. Rocksalana Willes's Sampler
Plate XXXII. Hannah Janney's Sampler
Plate XXXIII. Ann Buller's Sampler
Plate XXXIV. Margaret Ramsay's Sampler
Plate XXXV. Sally Munro's Sampler
Plate XXXVI. Jane Humphreys' Sampler
Plate XXXVII. Mary Clark's Sampler
Plate XXXVIII. Zebiah Gore's Sampler
Plate XXXIX. Sally Baldwin's Sampler
Plate XL. Loann Smith's Sampler
Plate XLI. Ann Macomber's Sampler
Plate XLII. Patty Coggeshall's Sampler
(Colored)
Plate XLIII. Lucy Warner's Sampler
Plate XLIV. Mary Traill's Sampler
Plate XLV. Eliza Cozzens's Sampler
Plate XLVI. Lydia Stocker's Sampler
(Colored)
Plate XLVII. Susan Lehman's Sampler
Plate XLVIII. Mary Hamilton's Sampler
Plate XLIX. Clarissa Emerson's Sampler
Plate L. Laura Bowker's Sampler
(Colored)
Plate LI. Lucy D. Stickney's Sampler
Plate LII. Elizabeth Funk's Sampler
Plate LIII. Sophia Catherine Bier's Sampler
Plate LIV. Maria Lamborn's Sampler
Plate LV. Content Phillips's Sampler
Plate LVI. Sarah Dole's Sampler
Plate LVII. Sarah Yeakel's Sampler
Plate LVIII. Ann Sophia Beckwith's Sampler
Plate LIX. Nancy Platt's Sampler
Plate LX. Betty Brierley's Sampler
Plate LXI. Faith Walker's Sampler
Plate LXII. Sarah F. Sweet's Sampler
Plate LXIII. Picture of William and Mary
College
Sarah: Donna: Leonora: Saunders
Plate LXIV. Emily Clark's Sampler
Plate LXV. Ann Watson's Sampler
Plate LXVI. Elizabeth Jane Hosmer's Sampler
Plate LXVII. Eliza F. Budd's Sampler
Plate LXVIII. Sophia Stevens Smith's Sampler
(Colored)
Plate LXIX. Mary Gill's Sampler. Lace sampler by an Unknown Girl
Plate LXXI. Frances Wade's Sampler
Plate LXXII. Sarah S. Caldwell's Sampler
Plate LXXIII. Margaret Moss's Sampler
(Colored)
Plate LXXIV. Hannah Loring's Sampler
Plate LXXV. Harriet Jones's Sampler
Plate LXXVI. Lucy P. Wyman's Sampler
Plate LXXVII. Elizabeth McIntyre's Sampler

pg 15
book pg vii
Plate LXXVIII. Hannah J. Robinson's Sampler
Plate LXXIX. Louisa Gauffreau's Sampler
Plate LXXX. Mary Ann Fessenden Vinton's Sampler
Plate LXXXI. Eliza Pickets's Sampler
Plate LXXXII. Susan H. Munson's Sampler
Plate LXXXIII. Margaret Kerlin's Sampler
Plate LXXXIV. Fanny Rines's Sampler
Plate LXXXV. Elizabeth A. Harwood's Sampler
Plate LXXXVI. The Down Family Record
Plate LXXXVII. Eliza Crocker's Sampler
Plate LXXXVIII. Sally Shattuck's Sampler
Plate LXXXIX. Nancy Wright's Sampler
Plate XC. Nabby Mason Peele
Plate XCI. Sally Witt's Sampler
(Colored)
Plate XCII. C. Sanderson's Sampler
Plate XCIII. Martha Heuling's Sampler
Plate XCIV. Susana Cox's Sampler
Plate XCV. Lydia Burroughs's Sampler
Plate XCVI. Julia Knight's Sampler
Barberry Eagle's Sampler
Plate XCVII. Ann E. Kelly's Sampler
Plate XCVIII. Sarah Catherine Moffatt Odiorne's Sampler
Plate XCIX. Nancy Hall's Sampler
Plate C. Nancy Winsor's Sampler
(Colored)
Plate CI. Lydia Church's Sampler
Plate CII. Hetty Lee's Sampler
Plate CIII. Caroline Vaughan's Sampler
Plate Civ. Sally Johnson's Sampler
(Colored)
Plate CV. Elizabeth Stevens's Sampler
Plate CVI. Sukey Makepeace's Sampler
Plate CVII. Jane Merritt's Sampler
Plate CVIII. Nancy Baker's Sampler
Plate CIX. Mary Russell's Sampler
Plate CX. Ann Robins's Sampler
Plate CXI. Sarah Howell's Sampler
Ann Tatnall's Sampler
Plate CXII. Abigail Pinniger's Sampler
Ann Almy's Sampler
Plate CXIII. Appha Woodman's Sampler
Plate CXIV. Tryphenia Collins's Sampler
Plate CXV. Patty Kendall Sterling's Sampler
Plate CXVI. Julia Boudinot's Sampler
Plate CXVII. "Indian Pink"
Plate XCVIII. "Strawberries and Acorns"
Plate CXIX. "Rose and Trefoil"
Plate CXX. "Some Sampler Stitches"
Plate CXXI. Hatchment of the Hon. George Boyd
Plate CXXII. Hatchment of Governor Thomas Fitch
Plate CXXII. Embroidered Arms of the Gilbert Family
Plate CXXIV. The Arms of E. Davis
(Colored)
Plate CXXV. Hatchment of the Ives Family
Plate CXXVI. Arms of the Hon. Harrison Gray

pdf pg 16
AMERICAN SAMPLERS

pdf pg 17
book pg 1
SEVENTEENTH CENTURY SAMPLERS

Those who go fishing for whales in the ocean of the past, sometimes
catch only sprats. Unfortunately, this is the result of
fishing in the past for the origin of the sampler. Not only
are sprats the only fish, but they are thin and very few. Just when
samplers began to be worked no one knows, for aside from a few
rather casual remarks in literature, we have nothing to tell us.
The earliest mention of a sampler so far found is in 1502, when
Elizabeth of York paid 8d. for an ell of linen cloth for one. Her
account book shows the entry on July 10, 1502: "an for an elne of
lynnyn cloth for a sampler for the Queen viii d. To Thomas Fische."
John Skelton, the poet, at about this same time in Norfolk, wrote,
"The Sampler to sowe on, the lacis to embroid."

In 1546, Margaret Thompson, of Freston-in-Holland, Lincolnshire,
left a will, in which she says, "I gyve to Alys Pynchebeck my
syster's daoughter my sawmpler with semes." This last item would
seem to indicate that probably the Tudor sample, of which we have
no survival, was the same long and very narrow affair that the seventeenth
century shows. The loom of the day was quite narrow, and
this accounts for the width of the sampler. Thus the "semes" may
mean that several pieces were joined together, or perhaps, as one
writer suggests, the word is used in an obsolete and transferred meaning,
and shows that it was made in ordered rows, like a seventeenth
century sampler. Much fine work was done to make beautiful the
"open seam," which the narrow loom rendered necessary.

Certainly toward the middle of the sixteenth century the sampler
was growing in popularity, for an inventory taken in the fourth year
of Edward VI's reign shows:
"Item......xii samplers
"Item......one sampler of Normandie Canvas wrought with
green and black silk." *
*Harleian Manuscript No. 1419 1

book pg 2
The raison d'etre of the sampler is most practical. Needlework
and embroidery were practically the only relaxation of most women,
and almost everything was embroidered. In the seventeen century
a book called "Needles Excellency" * gives a list of things for which
a sampler was required. They include "handkerchiefs, table cloathes
for parlours or for halls, sheets, towels, napkins, pillow-beares." A
long period of peace had brought luxery to the household in the sixteenth
century. Napery and drapery increased, and along with them
the craze for embroidery. In fact, so great was the craze, that clothing,
household linen, and everything of the sort fell a victim. France
had the same tendency, and in 1586 Catherine de Medici was petitioned
to put a stop to it, on the plea that "mills, pastures, woods and all the
revenues are wasted on embroideries, insertions, trimmings, tassells,
fringes, hangings, gimps, needleworks, small chain stitching, quiltings,
back stitchings, etc., new diversities of which are invented daily."

The need for the sampler lay in the fact that there were few, if any,
books of patterns. Thus the sampler was the pattern-book, and long
or short, contained the designs which appealed to each girl's taste.
So we can imagine that each girl, as she gathered together her linen
for filling on of those lovely old oak dower-chests, added a sampler
to take with her on her new adventure in life.

There have been many surmises as to just how these patterns grew
up in England, and many experts favor the idea that most of them
came from Italy and from other foreign sources. Certainly one did,
for an Italian towel shows the same design as that on Mary Hudson's
sampler. (See Plate ix.)

One book tells us of "a tradition that Catherine of Aragon taught
the Bedfordshire women cut-work or reticella made of linen, an art
which we know to have been practised in Italy and Spain at the time,
and which the early evidences of old English samplers prove to have
been made, though with less taste, in England." #
* "The Needles Excellency. A New Booke wherein are Divers admirable workers wrought with the needle,
newly invented and cut in Copper for the pleasure and profit of the industrious. Printed for James Boler and
are to be sold at the Syne of the Marigold in Paules Churchyard. 1632." There were twelve editions before 1640,
but the book is extremely rare.
# "Buckinghamshire and Bedforshire Lace in Point and Pillow Lace," by A. M. S. 1899

image pdf pg 19
PLATE V
ELIZABETH ROBERT'S SAMPLER. Cir. 1665
Owned by Miss Georgianna Welles Sargent

book pg 3
Perhaps our ancestors did have "less taste," but I think there is
no question that needlework on the older English samplers is most
exquisite. The earliest samplers which we know were, as has been said,
very long and narrow. The upper portion was nearly always given
to elaborate running designs in color of conventionalized roses, tulips,
strawberries, trefoil, "Indian pink," the "tree of life," and geometric
designs, either alone or in combination. Sometimes human figures
were inserted, but not often, the famous "boxers" being the most
frequent. The lower half was often filled with lovely drawn- or cut-
work designs in white. Occasionally an alphabet appeared, but in so
subordinate a position that it is quite negligible, and was evidently
included merely as a pattern for marking linen. So the sampler was
really and "Examplar," as some of our modern American specimens
still call it. Some early English references call them "samp-cloths"
or "samplettes."

A great deal of stress has of late been laid upon the affiliation of
the sampler and the horn-book, but it seems as if the horn-book, if it
had any influence upon the sampler at all, was distinctly toward its
degeneration. Certainly the seventeenth century sampler shows not
the slightest influence of the horn-book, for it was not until the early
eighteenth century that the dismal sampler, containing merely rows
of alphabet, appeared at all.

But to return to the Tudor sampler, which lives only in our
imagination, it is interesting to know that Sir Philip Sydney, in his
"Arcadia," wrote:
"O love, why dost thou in thy beautiful sampler set such a work for my desire,
to set out which is impossible?"
and that Shakespeare, in the "Midsummer Night's Dream," makes
Helena exclain:
"We, Hermia, like two artificial Gods,
Have with our needles created both one flower,
Both on one sampler, sitting on one cushion."
Shakespear certainly reflected the state of mind of the children of
a later date, who were doomed by stern schoolmistresses to sew on
samplers, when he says:

book pg 4
"Fail Philomela, she but lost her tongue,
And in a tedious sampler sew'd her mind." *
(Titus Andronicus)
These first samplers had no names or dates upon them, for probably
they were a continuous perfermance, and so could never be dated.
The early ones were kept on a roll as a convenience, for on English
sampler done in 1664, while but seven inches wide, was three feet long.
The old samplers were always on linen, and were not done by children,
but by girls and women, for very practical use. The earliest appear
to be entirely of lace or drawn-work. Of seventeenth century samplers,
it may also be said that the needlework in itself was more
beautiful and the design more intricat and definite. One English
writed goes so far as to say that the oldes were the best and the youngest
the worst. That would not be entirely true of American samplers.

As the sampler grew out of the lack of books on embroidery,
it is interesting to know that there was a progressive soul, one
Peter Quentel, who printed a book of patterns as early as 1527. No
copy exists, so far as is know; but in 1701 a similar book "gives
borders and corner pieces, some few of which, at least, are derived from
those included in the book of patterns for various kinds of needlework
published by Peter Quentel." The ubiquitous Germans also printed
a book in Nuremberg, in 1748.

There has been an amusing controversy between English and
American collectors as to which nation owned the oldest dated sampler.
These many years we have held the palm, for Anne Gower's sampler
is in the Essex Institute in Salem, Massachusetts. Now Anne Gower
became the wife of Governor Endecott before 1628; and while it was
embroidered, of course, in England, the sampler itself was here, and
we claimed it as American. The English connoisseurs date it at
about 1610. There is one other American claimant earlier than
the earliest English one of 1643; this is Loara Standish's, now in
Pilgrim Hall at Plymouth. Loara Standish, the daughter of Captain
Myles Standish, was born in 1623 and died before 1656. It is probable
that the sampler was made before she was twenty, so that is was
*This verse is on the sampler of Anne Hathaway, 1797

book pg 5
pdf pg 22
done before or at nearly the same time as the punto in aria sampler
of Elizabeth Hinde, in 1643. This latter sampler would be more
convincing if the name and date were not on finer linen sewed to the bottom.
Anne Gower's sampler was, of course, done in England, and it is a
good specimen of drawn-work, filet, and the flat white-stitch used
on damask. So it is to Loara Standish's sampler that we must turn
for our earliest American-made example. It is in the regular English
style, done in blues and browns, soft now with time. The designs are
intricate and beautifully done. Our Loara, besides making the first
American sampler, worked upon it the first aphorism which appears
upon any sampler. She began, poor Pilgrim maid, that long line of
pious verse that decorated, even unto the end, both English and
American samplers.

"Lord Guide my Heart that I may do Thy Will
And fill my heart with such convenient skill
As will conduce to Virtue void of Shame
And I will give the Glory to Thy Name."
She worked upon her sampler, also, "Loara Standish is my name,"
and so was the forerunner of that long series of girls who so indicated
the work of their hands. Evidently she did not know the whole verse
as it later came into use.

New England was the home of all but one of the seventeenth
century samplers that have so far been reported. The next oldest after
Loara Standish's was made by Mary Hollingsworth, of Salem.
She was born in 1650 and married, in 1675, Phillip English, a Salem
merchant. Her sampler, probably made about 1665, is typical of
the time, but bears an alphabet and her name. Mary Hollingsworth
English was accused of witchcraft in 1692, but escaped with her life
to New York. She was overcome by the shock of the accusation
that she died soon after her escape.

At about the same time another New England maid, Sarah Lord,
made a lovely sampler in 1668. It is of extremely fine needlework,
and shows a tendency, which was apparently developing in Amercia,
toward shorter and broader samplers. The workmanship had not

book pg 6
pdf pg 23
degenerated as yet, nor had the patterns, but there are fewer of them.
Sarah Lord made one pattern upon her sampler in which the petals
of the roses are raised and free from the groundwork, done in button-hole-stitch.
Some English samplers of the same time show this form
of work, in the raised draperies of ladies' dresses and men's coats.
Only two other American seventeenth century samplers have been
reported, and both, perhaps, may be questioned. The first, done in
1675 by Isabella Ercy, is very attractive, though it shows the tendency
toward less interesting and less elaborate design. It bears the inscription:
"WORKE. ANd. LETTERd. 1675
WOULD. HAVE. MENDED. BOTH.
MY SKILL HAD BEN. BETTER. I.
ROUGHT. THE SAME. BUT. IF.
WITH. NEDEL. AND.SCILK. I. W.
ISABELLA ERCY IS MY NAME."
The owner of this sampler frankly acknowledges that he does not
know who Isabella Ercy was, and so we cannoth be sure that it is really
American after all.

The other sampler bears no name, but has the date 1698. It is
long and narrow and is done in crewel in brilliant hues, which is not
an especially common medium for either English or American samplers
of the period.

It is impossible to call this chaper complete without mentioning
three samplers which were, of course, made in England, but which
have been in this country for over two hundred years. About 1650,
Elizasbeth, daughter of Nicholas Roberts, of London, was born in
England. As a young girl, about to be married to a Mr. Breeden, she
embroidered two samplers; one contains designs in color, and one is of
punto tagliato. The lace one is signed "Elizabeth Robert," and the
other has her initials "E R" many times repeated. She was a widow
in 1672, when she married Colonel Samuel Shrimpton, a wealthy merchant,
and owner of Noddle's Island in Boston Harbor. When she
came to Boston she brought her samplers with her, as all thrifty house-wives
should. Later, a wealthy widow, she married Simeon Stoddard,

Image pdf pg 24
PLATE VI
ELIZABETH ROBERT'S SAMPLER. Cir. 1665
Owned by Miss Georgianna Welles Sargent

book pg 7
pdf pg 25
another Boston merchant, and she lived in Boston until her death in
1713. The chief interest that these two samplers have is this: that
they are the earliest samplers, either in England or American, which
were were worked by some one whose portrait we also have. The portrait
hangs in the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and for
the benefit of the curious we will say that the eyes and hair are light
brown, and the dress black and white.

The third sampler, which was brought by the Quincys to New
England before 1700, is signed:
"Miles Fletwood, Abigail Fletwood 1654.
In prosperity friends will be plenty, but
In adversity not one in twenty."
Mrs. Henry Quincy, who was Mary Salter and herself an expert
needlewoman, gave this sampler to her daughter, with the remark
that it was "an old family thing." Tradition says that a General
Charles Fleetwood, of Cromwell's army, had a brother Miles who
retained his allegiance to the King. His experience in those troublous
times perhaps inspired the verse, if these two Mile's are the same man.
The connection with the Quincys is not clear, but it is true that at this
time the Quincys live in Throp-Achurch and the Fleetwoods in
Aldwinckle, in Northamptonshire, not thirteen miles apart. The
sampler has the figures of three ladies in flowing skirts at the top.
Over the central one are the initials "S. Q." The others are labeled,
respectively, "A" and "E." The former owner thinks that these
letters, added in steel beads, are a later addition when the sampler
passed into the hands of the Quincys. The ladies themselves, as you
see them depicted in the sampler, are Quincy ladies. The heads are
stuffed and the dresses sewed on. Underneath the heads and the
dresses are the heads of the Fleetwood ladies, and their much more
archaic dresses. The back of the sampler discloses the substitution.
Below the three ladies are a man and a woman on either side of an
unrestful lion seated beneath a tree. The rest of the sampler is taken
up with repeating designs of more or less elaborateness, and is unusual
and lovely.

book pg 8
pdf pg 26
So the seventeenth century ended, showing several distinct tendencies
in sampler art.

Samplers in America were broadening and shortening, they were
becoming distinctly less interesting, and the elaborate embroidery of
household linen had vanished from the land. Folk were too busy
taming the wilderness to attach much importance to the frills and
furbelows, and one can feel this distinctly as one realizes how very
few samplers our American girls did in the seventeenth century. One
may say that the sampler of that type became extinct, for while there
were echoes of a design here and there in the next century, such as that
of Grace Tay, it was a very feeble echo, and is more like the haunting
of a ghost than anything else. The reason for the sampler had gone,
and the revival was on different lines and for a different purpose.
As one caustic writer says, "When meaning is gone, art and beauty
vanish too." While they did vanish for a time, a purpose later crept
in which gave our American samplers some art and much quaintness.
ETHEL STANWOOD BOLTON.
image
MARY LEAVITT. 1718
Owned by Miss A. B. Willson

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SAMPLERS --- 1600 - 1700
ERCY, ISABELLA. 1675 8" x 16". Line, satin, and cross-stitch. Cross-borders of conventionalized
roses, carnations, urns, birds, animals, etc. Verse 128 (var.). Illustrated.
Daniel Penton Hitchner, Esq.

GOWER, ANNE. [Cir. 1610.] 6 ' x 16". Alphabet. Eyelet, satin, and various kinds of lace
stitches. Worked in bands across sampler. Illustrated.
Essex Institute, Salem

HOLLINGSWORTH, MARY. [Cir. 1665.] 7" x 25". 1 alphabet. Cross-stitch. The patterns in the
cross-borders are those used for shawl borders and the squares at the top thosed used for
the corners. Illustrated.
Essex Institute

HUDSON, MARY. 1700. 8 years. 7" x 29". Eyelet, outline, stem, satin, and cross-stitch. Cross-borders
of conventional leaves and rosebuds, also Italian designs. Illustrated.
Miss Sarah Rebecca Nicholson

LORD, SARAH. 1668. 9 3/4" x 17 3/4". Eyelet, satin, buttonhole, chain, outline, and cross-stitch. In band across center the flowers and figures are raised from linen and attached only at
center of figure. Illustrated.
Mrs. Thomas Sinnickson, Jr.

STANDISH, LOARA. [Cir. 1636.] Cross-borders like the others of this period. Verses 128 (1st
line), 338. Illustrated in color.
Pilgrim Hall, Plymouth

UNKNOWN. 1698. 8 1/4" x 33". 1 alphabet. Buttonhole, eyelet, flat, and cross-stitch, also hem-stitching.
Long series of conventional flowers in brillian crewel.
Mrs. Thomas A. Lawton

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EIGHTEENTH CENTURY SAMPLERS
HISTORY would be so much more comfortable for those who
indulge in writing it fi its terminations were more abrupt,
and if its characters had a less ghost-like manner of melting
into space - and lo! the place that knew them knows them no more.
So it would be much more comfortable, in considering samplers, to say
that when we meet a new century we meet a new style of sampler;
but the truth is that it took about twenty years after the new century
came in before the English sampler types became sufficiently ghostly
to ignore in favor of the new and truly American development.

The maiden to be married, on her outlying farm, in her frontier
town, now happily freed from Indian terror, had no use for embroidery
as an accessory for either her clothes or her linen; she was thankful
for either unadorned. Life in the towns, too, was hard and poor after
the Indian wars had taken their toll of the Colonies' wealth. Even so,
we have one beautiful specimen of the old English style which was
done by Grace Tay, or Toy as she calls herself. She was born in
Woburn, Massachusetts, May 18, 1704; married, in 1724, Benjamin
Walker, and went with him to Andover to live. It is a beautiful
example of colored and white work, a yard long; the looms were
capable of making quite wide linen before this sampler was made,
for the selvage is at the top and bottom. (See Plate x.)

Having laid this last ghost, we can turn to other samplers made
during the same years that Grace Toy wrought, and we see the beginnings
of the esentially American sampler. Let us look first at the
English sampler, which also changed at this same period, but in a
different way. The English sampler clung much longer than did the
American to the form of the seventeenth century. By the middle of
the eighteenth century, by gradual stages, it had become square and
had acquired a border. It soom had verses, alphabets, and numerals;
and then, toward the end of the century, more and more tended toward

Image
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PLATE VII
ELIZABETH ROBERT
Owned by the Massachusetts Historical Society

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a mass of unrelated designs; so that in the end it looked more like a
sale-sheet of a modern vender of cross-stitch designs than anything
else.

We may consider that we in America were more fortunate, for
while many of the samplers contain little but alphabets, numbers, and
verses, separated by rows of extremely debased patterns, yet as a rule
they had form and coherence of design, which the English sampler
lacks.

In the first half of the eighteenth century, as in the entire seventeenth,
New England furnishes by far the largest number of samplers,
followed by Long Island, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania. It is, perhaps,
inevitable that, as the material has been collected from Boston
as a center, New England should have been more easily reached and
more prolifically represented than are other parts of the coast.

The girls of most of the great nations of Europe worked samplers,
quite characteristic and differing in their basic essentials. The
Spaniards brought the art to Mexico, but neither the early Dutch nor
the early Germans seem to have brought their particular form to this
country. In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in
certain localities - such as parts of Pennsylvania - a certain Dutch
or German influence can be seen, but it is quite rare; so we are really
left with a very clear-cut result. We have first a century of imitation
of the old English model, good but gradually degenerating, followed
by a very distinct type of American sampler. It is the development of
this second type with which we now have to do. It is inevitable, as one
considers the schools of this century, to feel that the samplers, like the
schools, fall into two classes. First came the Dame School, where
the very young were taught, and where the samplers done by these
small hands were very simple things indeed. And so we have the
commonest form of sampler, that which contains merely alphabets
and numbers. Not much from a artistic point of view, we shall all
agree, but very much as an indication that our ancestresses got a
little learning, meager though it was. This sampler must have been
a wonderful assistance in driving home to the weary, childish brain

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the letter learned from her horn-book primer. And so we have poor
little Mary Smith, in her sixth year, in 1714, working a simple form
of the long sampler, with one large and one small alphabet. It was
done on fine linen, and contained that most frequent of all verses,
"Mary Smith is my name and with my nedel I wroght the same."
She is not, by any manner of means, the only child of five who worked
a sampler at this time.

The other form, done by the older girl at her finishing school,
was, as a rule, a more elaborate object. Quite early in the century,
originality began to be shown. Take, for instance, Mary Leavitt's
sampler, done in 1718. Having accomplished the stupid task of embroidering
four sets of alphabets separated by the simplest of cross-borders,
she then, at the bottom, made a nice green hill, with one fair
plant upon it, and "Ashur" and "Elisha" in long-tailed coats, white
stocking, and black shoes, dancing and playing pipes thereon. (See
tailpiece, page 8.) Mary Leavitte was a Salem, Massachusetts, girl;
and that same year Eunice Bowditch, another Salem girl, embroidered
a sampler, but she did not have Mary's originality.

By 1721 we may feel that the real American sampler is with us,
for in that year Mary Daintery, aged eight, embroidered a sampler
broader than it was long, and put a border all around it. This is the
first example of a border as a frame which has come to our notice on
an authentic American sampler, though of course there may be earlier
cases. In the upper center stands the figure of Christ, and all around
and beneath is "PUBLIUS LENTULUS his Letter to the Senate
OF Rome Concerning JeSUS ChrIST (&c.)." (See Plate xi.)
This fascinating sampler is owned on Long Island, but came from a
farmhouse near New Haven, Connecticut. Until 1730, with this one
exception, the samplers are, as a rule, alphabets separated by very
simple cross-borders, with little or no design. A few had framing
borders. The childish hands were not able to make the lovely, complicated
"Indian pink," the rose, and "Tree of life" that the older girls
of a previous century had done so beautifully. So we have simple
strawberry, acorn, and Greek frets, varied occasionally with a vine

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made free-hand. One small girl, in 1724, Mary Frye, made a cross-border
of hearts, and her biographer tells of her that "she was an orphan
from infancy, but an heiress and a belle, if a devout Quaker
maiden can be called a belle. When young Samuel Willis fell in love
with her, he found he must win her from many competitors. But he
had this in his favor, she was his father's ward and was dwelling under
his father's roof."

In 1730, Pennsylvania contributes a wonderful sampler; it is only
saved from ostracism as a needlework picture by the fact that Mary
or Martha Bulyn signed and dated it. Thus early in the century
does the decision as to what a sampler is and what is a needlework
picture have to be made. The needlework picture of the period, like
many that preceded it, was done all over the linen canvas in either
petit-point, cross-stitch, or, occasionally, tent-stitch. This form of
needlework had been done in England since the days of the Conqueror.
Our ancestors, lacking pictures and feeling the need for some form
of wall decoration, used the needlework pictures and samplers in that
way. The story has come down to us of one little girl who left out
her middle name when she worked her sampler. She put the initial
in up above, but her parents were so annoyed at the omission that as a
punishment they refused to frame her sampler. Poor mite! she may
have hated that middle name as many of us hate ours to this day.

To return to our muttons, an aribitrary ruling was felt to be
necessary to distinguish between these two forms, and so all needlework
signed and dated by the maker has been accepted as a sampler.
Thus we have had to eliminate much that was lovely and interesting.
Mary Bulyn's sampler is of a shepherdess beneath a tree, surrounded
by her flocks and dogs. The perspective is what one expects on a
sampler of any age; the flowers are much bigger than the sheep, and
the birds that roost upon the tree ineveitably, in any other world, would
tear it limb from limb, so large and fat are they. But it is most charming.
(See Plate xii.) Just at this same time, Pennsylvania gave
us another form of sampler. Two lines of verse and then a rather
elaborate cross-border, in some cases returning to seventeenth century

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design; then two more lines and another border, and so on, the whole
framed in a simple border or not, as the case might be. (See Plate xiii,
Sarah Howell, Plate cxi, and Abigail Pinniger, Plate cxii.) This precise
form appears but once after 1735, though the alternation of verse
and cross-borders in other mixtures does appear spasmodically. The
exception is Ann Tatnal's sampler, done in Deleware in 1785; and it
is so like the Pennsylvania ones, both in form and detail, as to make
us suspect that she copied an early one. Even from the beginning,
when Loara Standish put her short verse upon her sampler, pious
verse was always an adjunct. Verse was not inevitable; sometimes
there were prose quotations of a religious nature, often the Lord's
Prayer, the Creed, or a metrical version of the Ten Commandments.
The Lord's Prayer and the Creed were most frequently done in a form
to reproduce the tablets to be seen, during the eighteenth century, in
the east end of English and American Episcopal churches. Hannah
Trecothick, of Boston, did one such in 1738, and she had many followers. (See Plate xiv.)
About this time some school, evidently near Boston, conceived
the idea of using Adam and Eve and the apple as a subject for the
religious enlightenment of its pupils. Two samplers, done in 1741,
and one in 1753, are practically identical, design for design. The
apple trees are laden with fruit of such a size as to make the modern
farmer green with envy. Adam is accompanied by a goose and Eve
by a rabbit. Let us hope that there was no irony in the tender minds
of those whose fingers wrought so well. And each of the six figures
presses one hand upon man's dearest spot, as if already each felt the
result of the coming indigestible meal. The serpent - he looks much
more like a fat angle worm - embraces the tree with one or more coils,
tempting our universal mother. The fig leaves are large and very
modest. In 1745, we find another version of the story, for Adam and
Eve face us; and Adam has one of those lovely beards, now so little
seen, running under the chin and up in front of the ears, which most
Irish laborers of our early childhood fancied. Eve has an enormous
quantity of hair, and the serpent has his eye on all comers. He is

image
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PLATE VIII
MILES FLETWOOD ABIGAL FLETWOOD. 1654
Owned by Mrs. Michael Foster

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