Jane Jubilee Cox

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.