Eliza Ellen McIntire, Mrs. S. B. Bowen’s School, White River, Randolph County, Indiana, 1836
Price: $16,500, Sampler size: 25" x 20"

Samplers made west of Ohio are rare and those naming the town and teacher are exceedingly so. Eleven-year-old Eliza Ellen McIntire stitched this highly important sampler while attending Mrs. S. B. Bowen's School in the town of White River, in Randolph County which is northeast of Indianapolis. This is the only sampler known from this school. Eliza Ellen McIntire was born in White River on Dec 14, 1825, the daughter of Robinson McIntire (1786-1871) and Mary Taylor McIntire (1787-1854). Robinson McIntire was born in Pennsylvania and his wife Mary was born in Butler County, Ohio; they married in 1813 in Ohio and by 1819 the family had joined the westward movement and removed to Indiana. Their first three children were born in Ohio and their five other children were born in White River, Indiana.

The sampler made by Eliza is large and filled with needlework forming a highly developed and detailed pictorial scene, lengthy Biblical verse worked in tiny lettering, a long series of family initials and a boldly worked inscription. It is all surrounded by one of the most interesting borders that we have seen on any sampler, with finely worked little vignettes throughout. Birds in trees, baskets of fruit, a richly detailed strawberry plant and two little couples are fit into the arcades of the border. This sophisticated and extraordinary sampler is even more remarkable in that it was worked in a state that had only existed as such for 20 years in 1836.

In 1846, she married Simeon V. Brickley a farmer who was born in 1822 in Preble Co., Ohio in 1822. He was also living in White River and they remained there, owning lime quarries and lime kilns. Eliza and Simeon became the parents of four children born between 1848 and 1856. Eliza remained in Indiana her entire life and died in 1901.

Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in very good condition overall with some loss to the linen. It has been conservation mounted and is in a maple and cherry frame.