Arlington Historical Society: The Samplers Of West Cambridge

Press release from the Arlington Historical Society:

January 24, 2022

Needlework samplers, employed as an educational tool and a measure of female accomplishment, make their first appearance in England in the early 16th Century. Thus, English Colonists in America must have imported the skills to keep the craft alive in their new home. However, given the rigors of daily life in those early days, time to do fancy needlework would have been extremely limited, so surviving examples of 17th Century Colonial samplers are rare, and, not surprisingly, they closely follow English models. Like the Society’s sampler made by Mary Richardson in 1765 (now on display in the Assembly Room) the earliest samplers are generally tall and narrow in proportion and worked in horizontal bands containing geometric patterns, highly stylized depictions of natural phenomena, and often an alphabet.  Generally crafted by young girls, samplers were used to teach practical needlework skills as well as decorative stitchery meant to enhance the beauty of clothing and domestic linens.  For many girls and their families, a completed sampler was a sign of accomplishment, proof not only of her domestic skills, but also a reflection of her refinement and suitability for marriage.  While girls stitched samplers under their mothers’ supervision, probably from the earliest years of settlement, the craft flourished mostly between about 1790 and 1830, where it was employed as an educational tool in the small, informal private schools set up in many towns to provide basic education to the young. When public school education in Massachusetts became widespread in the 1830’s, the era of sampler-making came to an end.

By around 1720, pictorial features began to enliven girls’ samplers. One can appreciate how this might have provided additional motivation for a young girl striving for perfection as she suffered the tedium of mastering a multitude of intricate stitches.  A popular early subject, which is not represented in the Society’s collection, was the Temptation in the Garden of Eden in which a naked Adam and Eve are depicted on either side of a snake-bedecked tree and surrounded by a scattering of plants and animals. The couple is represented as either having already plucked, or preparing to pluck, the forbidden fruit.  The area above the scene would have followed tradition with its narrow horizontal bands containing the standard alphabets, numerals and repertoire of decorative motifs. 

The youngest children in a New England town would have attended a ‘dame school,’ an informal gathering of children maintained by a local woman in her home or in a rented space.  Instruction was focused on the acquisition of basic literacy.  For older children, ages at least eight or ten, the academy provided a higher level of education. (In some regions such schools were called seminaries or institutes.)   Whether single sex or coeducational, many were presided over by a female instructor and like the dame schools, were in session for only a few weeks or months at a time.  Academy instruction was aimed at building on the basics, and, depending on the teacher’s preparation, might also include a smattering of classics, languages, geography, and science.  It would have been mainly at such institutions that children also would have potentially pursued more specialized studies:  for boys, surveying, navigation, and architectural drafting; for girls, music, dancing and needlework.  Most girls, under the close guidance of the teacher, probably would have at least attempted a sampler while at an academy.  The teacher would have been responsible for the design, which she might have created herself or possibly borrowed from a copybook or engraved print. Given the playfulness and charm of many samplers, it is hard to imagine that the girl did not have had a say in the choice of images.  Many samplers include pious or inspirational texts, which came from literary sources provided by the teacher but chosen by the girl (Lucy Hill, Hannah Balkcom, Ann Jane Cook).  The girl was always responsible for the actual stitching of the piece. The Society’s collection of samplers indicates that these children applied themselves to their  task with varying degrees of commitment. Some reveal loose threads where the project was abandoned; some are a bit crude in execution. The best of course are true works of art, and one can imagine the pride of the girl and her parents when such a sampler finally was framed and displayed on the parlor wall.          

Rebecca Tufts Fessenden’s watercolor can be judged representative of Mrs. Gill’s teaching and of the characteristics of her students’ work. The central image is a family tree, on which hang the ‘fruits’ of the marriage of Rebecca’s parents, John Tufts (1770-1817) and Rebecca Cutler (b.1779).  Their first child, Rebecca Tufts (1799-1887) executed her genealogical water color on a large sheet of paper (26 ½” x 21 ¼”) It resides in an oval frame, its composition dominated by an elaborate and classicizing variant of the family tree motif.  The tree stands between two monumental columns draped with a yellow curtain; in the sky above flies a nearly transparent putto holding a swag.  The parents’ names are inscribed in rondels on the column bases, and below, as if pictured in the distance, is a weeping willow and an inscribed urn before which stands a woman holding an anchor representing the allegorical figure of Hope as the “anchor of the soul.”  Finally, at the bottom of the composition, in the ‘real world,’ is depicted a pastoral landscape populated by miniature cows and sheep.    The Lane family tree in the Society’s collection so closely resembles Rebecca’s watercolor as well as  the two other watercolors attributed to Mrs. Gill’s school that it is likely that it, too, belongs to the small number of known works attributable to her instruction.

The days of creative sampler making in ended largely by 1830 as education developed into a public rather than a private endeavor in New England and as it became possible to purchase commercially produced patterns for many kinds of needlework.  The samplers made late in the 18th Century and during the first quarter of the 19th C. in West Cambridge and its neighbors therefore represent the apogee of sampler-making in New England.  At the time they were completed, they were a source of pride for the girl and her family; today they charm us with their naivety and impress us with the remarkable skill of their young makers.  Finally, for the historian, they offer a glimpse into the history of women, childhood, and education in the early American Republic.

1909.1.13. Caroline Harris Fiske (1829-1848)1909.1.16.   “                “       “        Cotton on linen  12” x 11 ½”West Cambridge, MA (both c. 1837-1840)Gift of Carolyn Fiske Neal

Caroline completed two samplers, the first when she was eight years old and the second perhaps a year or two later.  The date (1832) at the bottom of the earlier piece (1909.1.16), is incorrect and appears to have been added by another hand. A more likely date would be 1837-38. This simple, but beautifully wrought sampler displays the alphabet and numbers surrounded by a narrow, minimally decorated border.  Caroline’s later piece is more elaborate:  the letters and the text are enclosed in a wide border marked by a fine zig zag line punctuated at regular intervals with flower buds.  The lower third of the work contains this poem:  Best use of riches/When wealth in virtuous hands is given/It Blesses like dews of Heaven/Like Heaven it hears the orphans cries/And wipes the tears from widows eyes

Although in poor condition, this sampler attests to Letitia’s careful attention to craftsmanship.  Like Lucy Hill, Letitia opted to concentrate on text rather than on imagery. Again like Lucy, Letitia enlivened her design with a narrow, precisely rendered border, here composed of red berries or flowers articulating the spaces around the undulating line that trace the margins of the piece.  Two inscriptions fill the lower third of the sampler.  The first reads:  Letitia Whittemore’s work  Wrought in the eleventh year of her age   West Cambridge September 20 AD 1809.  Below, Letitia stitched these wise words: Constant application leads to excellence/Youth well-instructed maketh age well/disposed

1909.1.15. Eunice Daniels (1796/7-1845)Silk on linenNewton, MA c. 1805-1810Gift of Caroline Fisk Neal

Eunice married Benjamin Neal of Newton in 1821 and died in Newton in 1845.

Mary’s is the earliest sampler in the Society’s collection and in style it is typical of many 18th century samplers given its elongated proportions, narrow bands filled with text and variety of decorative patterns—all in keeping with English models.  The text reads Mary Richardson is my name/And with my needle I wrote the same/I was born in Cambridge June the 10 1753 and made this sampler March 1765 in the 12 year of my age.  When friends are gone and money spent Then learning is excellent.

1913.33.2  Martha Mary Williams Locke (1803-1888)Silk on linen MeasurementsMiddlesex Co., MA, 1813Gift of Burbank Family

With its emphasis on the house, this work resembles the Hall and Frost samplers in many respects, but it shows the influence of a different teacher. Unlike other samplers in the collection featuring the house motif, this richly embroidered piece devotes more space to text than to imagery. Above is the alphabet, rendered in three styles. A cartouche near the bottom reads Martha M.Ws Locks Work Wrought in the tenth year of her age.  West Cambridge August 8th 1813. Within the pictorial space, Martha added a poem:  The Fairest flower will soon decay/Its fragrance loose and splendid hew/So youth and beauty wears away/And vanishes in the morning dew. Differences aside, Martha’s piece is similar to others of its type with its inclusion of two trees, one heavily laden with fruit.  Two young women in white approach the house from the right, and they are balanced by two large pots of flowers on the left.  One distinguishing feature of Martha Mary’s work is her rendering of the house itself.  Rather than depicting a Federal-style structure fashionable in the early 19th Century, and seen on many samplers, Martha Mary chose to represent a house in the earlier Georgian style.  However, she gives it volume by placing it at an angle to the picture plane and shading the end wall.  Equally unusual is the working of the border.  The central area is immediately surrounded by the familiar sawtooth.  That, in turn, is surrounded by a wider frame filled with a chain of zigzags worked in dark thread.

1925.2.5. Unknown makerSilk on linen 14 x 5 ¾”Place and date: UnknownGift of Elizabeth Russell RourkeAn unfinished marking sampler presenting the alphabet in four different styles. Normally the numbers from 1 to 0 would be included as well.  A “marking sampler” was intended to teach a girl both useful stitches and basic literacy so that she could “mark” clothing and household linens for identification. It did not contain pictorial content. 

Lydia was ten years old when she finished this sampler of rather unusual design and very fine workmanship .  The sawtooth border, which other girls typically employed to enclose a tablet-like inner rectangle here frames the sampler at its outermost edges.  Lydia went to much effort with her alphabet and numbers, rendering them in several typefaces and placing them within narrow bands separated by lines of ornamental stitching.  At the bottom center is a cartouche playfully bound with a leafy wreath that reads “Lydia Adams/Work Wrought in the/tenth year of her age/West Cambridge October 11, 1807.” In the space below her alphabet, Lydia worked a popular verse:  “The fairest flower will soon decay/It’s fragrance loose and splendid hew/So youth and beauty wears away/And vanishes in the morning dew.

1931.2.51A  Eliza E. Parker (1804- in Lexington; d. 1877)1931.2.51B  Eliza E. ParkerSilk on linen (?) 13 ½” x 17 ½ (for 1931.2.51B, no measurement for 51A)Middlesex Co., MA , 1818Ida and Caira Robbins Estate

Eliza worked a second sampler, also in 1818, which she marked Eliza E. Parker Lexington.  It seems to have been constructed from sections of an abandoned sampler.  Attached to it are two slips of paper expressing praise for Eliza’s schoolwork, by Ann A. Morrison, presumably the mistress of the academy where Eliza practiced her needlework. Eliza was to be the wife of Nathan Robbins, Jr. (1803-1888).

Abigail was the great granddaughter of Jason Russell, the patriot. She was born and lived in Stafford, Ct., where she married George Parsons.  Horizontal in orientation, her design is simple, consisting of three alphabets and a set of numbers.  Abby’s planning may have been little faulty.  Having no room for X, Y and Z, at the end of the second line, she made do by tucking in two rows of tiny x’s.  Abby’s needlework would have been colorful when it was new as she worked several letters on each line with (now faded) primary colors.

Like a number of samplers made around the same time in the Cambridge area, Lucy’s is mostly stitched text, composed of three alphabets and a four-stanza poem.*  The only pictorial elements are a small candelabra-like object and a tree on either side of the cartouche, which reads Lucy Hill’s work wrought in the tenth year of her age West Cambridge 1817. The most engaging feature of this sampler is its framing border composed of a continuous looping line accented with alternating abstract forms, perhaps meant to reference trees and bells. 

*The diamond and the ruby’s blaze/Shine with a milder finer flame/And more attract our love and praise/Than beauty’s self if lost to fame./But the soft tear in pity’s eye/Transcends the diamond’s brightest beams.  And the sweet blush of modesty/More beauteous than the ruby seems/The glowing gem the sparkling stone/May strike the sight with quick surprise/But truth and innocence and love/Can still engage the good and wise

Lucy Hill’s work wrought in the tenth year of her age/ West Cambridge 1817

Only eight years old when she finished this finely worked piece, Ann Jane employed mainly cross-stitch and French knots. Below the pious text,* the surface is filled with stylized plants arranged in strict symmetry.  This type of design, found in many New England samplers, seems to have been especially favored by younger girls.  It is signed near the bottom:  Ann Jane Cook her work finish’d In the eighth year of her age 1811.

*Jesus/Permit thy gracious name to stand/As the first Effort  of an Infant hand/And while her fingers [on] this

1969.3.1. Hannah K. Balkom (1807/08-1885)Silk on linen  19 ½ x 19 ½” Norfolk, MA (?) 1820Gift of Maple Pond

Born in Norton, MA, and died in Norfolk, MA,  Hannah was the daughter of Samuel Balkom and Abigail Keith.  She married Perez Foster (1797-1887). 

Inscribed:  Hannah Hall’s Sampler/ Wrought in the tenth year of her age.

Hannah was born in Bridgewater, the daughter of Ebenezer Hall and Esther Ruhamah Cutter.  She married Cyrus Cutter, of West Cambridge in 1818, and died in Arlington. 

In a cartouche near the bottom Mary signed her sampler Mary S.W. Brooks wrought in the 10  year of her age West Cambridge October 1818.

Mary was the daughter of Ebenezer Brooks of Medford and Elizabeth Whittemore of Cambridge.  She married Libbeus Leach of Braintree in 1822 and died in Newton.

Like Abigail Russell, Sarah Ann was a great granddaughter of the patriot Jason Russell.  Her father Silas Russell was married to Deborah Foss; in 1831 Sarah Ann married Stephen F. Folsom.  Hers is a “marking sampler,” containing the alphabet arranged in bands, and stitched in blue, brown and tan.  Sarah Ann boldly embroidered her name at the bottom:  Sarahann Russell, aged 13.

Sally’s sampler shares important features with that of Hannah Hall (1992.15.1), and there are enough similarities between the two to suggest that they could have been made under the supervision of the same teacher, but if not, at least a widely known pattern.  Sally’s, however, is more elaborately conceived.  Prominently placed in the picture is a two and one half story Federal style house with its door colored a deep green.  Flanked by a pair of figures, the house stands on a grassy lawn:  on the left are a woman and a little girl beneath a leafy tree filled with black birds; on the right a couple stands holding hands in front of a leafless tree laden with fruit.  The upper portion of the scene contains three bands filled with an alphabet and numbers.  Each band is separated by wavy black lines possibly  meant to suggest clouds.  Below the house and garden scene is a cartouche with the inscription:  Sally Frost’s work wrought in the eleventh year of her age.  The central motif, like that in Hannah Hall’s work, is framed with a narrow green and white sawtooth band surrounded by wider band containing a zig zag line and a sprinkling of stylized flowers.

2016.8.9Lydia Prentiss (1771-1865)Sarah Prentiss (1811-1897)Silk on linen,  three squares framed as a group, each 7 ½” x 7 ½”West Cambridge, MALydia’s square c.1783;  Sarah’s squares c. 1823Gift of Susanna Adams

2016.8.37. Susanna Adams (1778-1860)Silk on linen. Measurements?West Cambridge, MA (1789?)Collection of the Winn Estate

Susanna was the daughter of Capt. William Adams (1724-1787)  and Sara Hill (1750-1806). She grew up in the ancient Adams house in West Cambridge.  She married George Prentice (Prentiss)  in 1804 and gave birth to six children.

An unfinished marking sampler containing two cursive alphabets in upper and lower case. The lower half of the fabric is unadorned.

In the lower quadrant Eliza stitched a three-story yellow house and to its left, two trees.  The upper half of this sampler is consumed by three upper case alphabets in differing styles.  Its elongated proportions and lack of a border is typical of 18th C. samplers, but Eliza’s depiction of a three-story Federal style house helps to support the early 19th C. dating.  The large, simple stitches and unadorned rendering of the scene suggest that 8 year-old Eliza had little patience with the tedium of needlework.

2021.FIC.68. Sarah Georgianna Winn (1842-1921)Silk on linen Size?West Cambridge (date?)

Sarah Georgiana was the daughter of Albert Winn and Sarah Prentiss.  She never married and lived her entire life in the Winn family home on Summer Street,  West Cambridge.

This press release was produced by the Arlington Historical Society. The views expressed here are the author’s own.