Susan Garth,
Union Hill Academy, Todd County, Kentucky,
1840

Sampler size:
17½" x 17"

Price: $sold

Enlarged and Printer Version

Samplers from Kentucky are quite rare of course and we are pleased to be able to offer this very fine example, a well-developed sampler that names the maker, teacher and school. The samplermaker, Susan Garth, born in 1833, was a very young girl when she attended Union Hill Academy in Todd County, southwestern Kentucky and made her sampler "under the inspection of Mrs. Lucy Ann Day". This school has not been documented on any other known sampler to date.

The family of the samplermaker and the family of the teacher are both fully discussed in a publication, 1884 History of the County of Todd, Kentucky. The Garth family came from Virginia in 1810 and remained in Todd County for generations; Susan married John H. Bell and they became the parents of 8 children. Lucy Ann Lipscomb married Rev. Charles M. Day, also a teacher, and they were also from Virginia. They removed to Kentucky by 1840 and Lucy seems to have begun teaching at the Union Hill Academy.

The sampler consists of finely worked alphabets, one in a two-tone eyelet stitch, a tight and fine inscription, an 8 line poem, a scene of two trees with a little blue urn under the willow, and a footed basket of flowers on a lawn. The border is of large flower blossom and leaves on vine.

Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in very good condition with some minor areas of loss and weakness, and stabilization to the linen. It has been conservation mounted into a cherry and figured maple corner block frame.

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