This delightful little sampler presents alphabets, numbers and a listing of vowels, embellished with satin-stitched flowers, chain stitched vine and satin-stitched edging. The samplermaker was  Lydia Vose Gregory, age 9 in 1808 and living in Concord, Massachusetts. She was born on June 21, 1799, the only child of Marshall and Grace (Vose) Gregory. Her maternal ancestry reaches back to Robert Vose, of Lancashire, England, who was in Dorchester, Massachusetts by 1654, when he purchased about 500 acres of land. Much information about the family is published in Robert Vose and His Descendants compiled by Ellen F. Vose (Boston, Massachusetts, 1932). Lydia’s grandfather, Joshua Vose (1742-1775), lived in Milton and was a cordwainer and tax collector for the town. He was a private in Capt. Ebenezer’s Company, when they responded to the Lexington Alarm.  

In 1821, Lydia married Darius Meriam, a Concord wheelwright, on May 8, 1821, and they became the parents of three sons. The Meriam family was a prominent one as well; the Meriam House, built in 1705 at the junction of Lexington and Bedford Roads and still standing today, features in the history of the Revolutionary War. 

Lydia died at age 38 and her sampler descended five generations in the family, as a note from the family that accompanies the sampler indicates. 

The sampler is in excellent condition worked in silk on linen, conservation mounted into a 19th century gilt frame.

German samplers can present a wonderful assortment of pictorial motifs that had been used by needleworkers in northern Europe for many centuries. The subjects of these little vignettes are frequently religious or symbolic, but depictions of the everyday were used as well. This praiseworthy sampler is filled with motifs from all categories, presenting some that are found only rarely. These include the pair of figures, Hope and Justice, in the upper corners, New Jerusalem (buildings on the little hills) in the lower right corner, Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane (right side center), Jacob Wrestling with the Angel (to the upper right of Adam & Eve), and the two figures on globes, representing the Ascension and the Resurrection.

Also included on this sampler are the common motifs of a house, church, ship, ladies at the well, recumbent deer and Adam & Eve. Quite interestingly, the samplermaker identified her city by stitching the coat of arms of Hamburg - a pair of lions flanking a castle.

Generally the makers of northern European samplers stitched their initials, rather than their names. In this case, the initials CCHS appear inside a wreath supported by heralding angels. 

Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in excellent condition and has been conservation mounted into black molded and painted frame.

By the second quarter of the 19th century, many American needleworkers were using the newly available Merino wool yarn for their samplers and other needlework projects. The wool from Merino sheep was fleecier and softer than the traditional worsted wool and it took dyes well, resulting in a yarn that was a bit easier to stitch and created a deeply saturated image.

This very appealing, folky depiction of a highly decorative basket with a robust flower arrangement makes wonderful use of Merino wool yarn and contrasts it well with the very fine linen background.

A variety of stitches was used to excellent effect. The flowers, leaves and buds were worked in satin-stitch, the stems, tendrils, leaf veins and open-work lattices of the basket were all worked in chain stitch, and a variation of French knots punctuate the composition nicely. 

It is in excellent condition and has been conservation mounted. Importantly, it remains in its outstanding original painted frame with rosette corner-blocks that nicely echo the needlework flower blossoms.

How fortunate that these two samplers, the work of Ann Finn and made as a pair, have remained together! Ann arranged her motifs in a traditional balanced and symmetrical manner, but each sampler also has a playful, somewhat whimsical quality. 

The 1832 sampler features a multicolored urn of pink and red carnations, a pair of geometric stars, birds, trees, and flowers and a very striking fat brown rabbit under arching branches. On her 1833 sampler, Ann varied her motifs and included two large-beaked birds, a chicken and an owl. 

The choice and scale of the various elements as well as the exuberant color and outstanding condition serve to make this pair of samplers truly delightful. 

Worked in silk on linen, they are both in excellent condition, conservation mounted in complementing frames, one being cherry with a maple bead and the other maple with a walnut bead.

Ann Finn (1832)

Ann Finn (1833)

A charming Adam & Eve sampler, this is inscribed "Remember Thy Creator in / The Days of Thy Youth / Mary Emerson March 1 1805." 

The assorted motifs include windmills, butterflies, birds and a costumed shepherd with his staff, dog and flock of sheep, but it is Adam and Eve scene that commands attention. The large serpent is wrapped around the trunk of the tree and seems to hold a basket in its mouth and the two figures have unusual treatment to their hair. They each have ponytails formed of silk floss which are long enough and made so that they could actually swing away from the sampler. Strong color, balanced format and excellent needlework are all combined in this sampler. 

The sampler was worked in silk on wool and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted into a beveled figured maple frame with a black bead.

Some English schoolgirls, working under talented instructresses, created outstanding samplers at young ages. This very appealing and beautifully made example was worked by ten-year-old Elizabeth Ecklee (one is 10 years old when in one’s 11th year), while a student at Mrs. Hill’s Academy in Kempsey, a small town four miles south of Worcester. It is signed, "Elizabeth Ecklee did this at Mrs. Hill Academy Kempsey in the 11th year of her age 1804."

The handsome four-storied building, depicted with tiny individual bricks and a checker-board roof, sits on a shaded lawn with an excellent, upwards-looking dog and a pair of deer. Tiny, perfectly executed stitches form the alphabet, inscription and verse, which is a quotation from “Reflections from a Flower Garden,” written in 1746 by Rev. James Hervery, a noted English poet. A border of fat strawberries provides a good visual framework. The sampler is relatively small, rendering this more finely worked than most samplers. 

The samplermaker may be the Elizabeth Ecklee whose marriage to Samuel Merrick on April 24, 1822 was recorded in Upton on Severn, a village six miles away from Kempsey. 

The sampler was worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted into its excellent, original bird’s-eye maple frame with gilt liner.

This samplermaker provided us with much information in the inscription on her excellent sampler, “Sophia Crow Aged 10 Years Sion House Hatfield Peverell Essex Anno 1829.” She was well-skilled in the needle arts as the sampler indicates. She presents a fine pictorial scene with two little cottages with vines growing up the sides, trees, birds, butterflies, central leafy tree with a squirrel perched atop, and, notably, two white pattern-darned squares above the cottages. Rather than a lawn, this scene is grounded with a graphic, diamond band which adds much to the composition. Fruit baskets, flowers and birds embellish the area above the verse, which, along with her inscription, is worked in a letter-perfect, Quaker style font. This verse was published in a book entitled, Vyse’s New London Spelling Book or the Young Gentlemen and Ladies’ Guide to the English Tongue, printed in Derby, England in 1823. 

Sophia was born in 1819 in Chelmsford, in central England. She was the daughter of William and Sophia Crow and her baptism on April 30 of that year was recorded at St. Mary the Virgin Church. She attended school in Hatfield Peverel, a village 6 miles away from Chelmsford and the family may have lived there then.

The 1851 census recorded Sophia living in London and working as a milliner, not surprisingly given her skills. In 1858, she married James Chapman and they removed to Scotland with their son. After the death of her husband, she married Thomas Abel Kent and they lived in London. She died in 1916 in Surrey. 

The sampler was worked in silk on wool and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a period maple frame with a gold liner.

This appealing sampler has a very pleasing aesthetic as it was worked entirely in blue silk on light colored linen. It was finished on May 30th 1820 and signed by its maker, Jane Jubilee Cox. The central alphabet was worked in an unusual fashion, with paired upper and lower case letters and along with the verse and the motifs, providing a charming format. 

Jane was the daughter of Charles and Margeret (Minchin) Cox of Oxford. Charles was a grocer and tea dealer with a shop in Oxford, as indicated by an ad that he placed in the Oxford Journal in 1801.

Jane’s birth date, October 25, 1809, was precisely on the Golden Jubilee which celebrated 50 years of the reign of King George III, and her parents specifically named her accordingly - Jane Jubilee Cox. 

At age 22, on December 10, 1831, she married William Luff and the newlyweds immediately emigrated to America, sailing to New York on the ship Columbia and arriving on May 2, 1832. 

They settled in Rhinebeck, a lovely town in the Hudson Valley, where the couple had seven children. William was a printer who owned, for a time, the Rhinebeck Gazette and Dutchess County Advertizer; he also worked as a shoemaker. 

Jane died in 1889 and is buried along with her husband and several children in Rhinebeck Cemetery. 

The sampler was worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition, with a very few missing stitches. It has been conservation mounted into a 19th century black painted and beveled frame.

Collet fiche is a fascinating form of needlework that originated in France at the end of the 18th century, in the convents of Ursuline nuns. This technique involves fine double sided embroidery and ink on paper, with the reverse finished in the same very fine manner as the front. The subject of these is always religious in nature, in keeping with their origin.

This splendid little example depicts a wide border of shimmering flower blossoms, buds and leaves surrounding an inner scene of a dove and banner over a flaming heart. The inked inscription, written in Latin, reads: “My husband has come. Bring the song of your voice to my ears.” The reverse is, of course, the identical but opposite image, with no visible knots to the silk floss (see photo below). 

Worked in silk on paper, it is in excellent condition and has been framed with glass on both sides.

photo of reverse

A lovely sampler with an interesting family history, this was made by Mary Ann Appleton, who was born in England in 1810 to Dr. Thomas Etherington Appleton and his wife, Ann Appleton. Mary was the eldest of their seven children. The family immigrated to the United States in 1821, sailing on the ship Cincinnatus and arriving in the port of New York. 

Thomas Etherington Appleton was a physician as well as an engineer, who co-designed the Staple Bend Tunnel, the first American railroad tunnel, in 1831. This was constructed for the Allegheny Portage Railroad section, located at a bend of the Little Conemaugh River. Initially, it allowed access to horse-drawn rail carriages hauling canal boats. 

Mary married James Wilson in 1827 and they had one child, James Appleton Wilson, born in 1828. Sadly, Mary died shortly after his birth and is buried in Lycoming County, Pennsylvania. The sampler descended in the family until recently. 

The sampler features alphabets, the most prominent in a fine, Quaker style font, and a numerical progression. An unusual border of excellent composition frames the sampler. More needlework, perhaps a two-line verse, must have been intended for the space below her inscription. 

Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in its original black and gold painted frame.