Nancy E. Kingsbury

A finely worked and delicate sampler, this is signed, “Nancy E. Kingsbury Born July th 10 1816 Aged 12 years.” Nancy featured alphabets, a numerical progression, a dear little house and an interesting border. The photo of the back of the sampler (see below), taken prior to conservation mounting, indicates that the pale colors are very close to the sampler as it was originally made. 

The Kingsbury family in America began with Joseph Kingsbury (1605-1676) who was born in Suffolk, England and immigrated to Massachusetts with his wife, Millicent, by 1635, when their first child was born. 

Generations later, Nancy was born, as she stitched on her sampler, on July 10, 1816. She was the daughter of Jonathan and Sarah (Williams) Kingsbury. Her grandfather, Jeremiah Kingsbury (1735-1816) was a captain in the Revolutionary War, commanding a company out of Worcester County, Massachusetts. 

Jonathan and Sarah moved around and it is difficult to pin down precisely where they lived when Nancy made her sampler. They lived in Oxford, Massachusetts for a time and History of the Town of Oxford, Massachusetts with Genealogies and Notes on Persons and Estates by George F. Daniels (Oxford, Massachusetts, 1892), indicates that Jonathan went to New York State and about 1816 removed to Peru, Ohio. 

Nancy married Harvey Moffitt (1816-1900) in 1835 in Huron, Ohio and they had five children. They later removed to Michigan where Nancy died in 1886. 

The sampler was worked in silk on linen and is in very good condition with a few lost stitches. It has been conservation mounted and is in a molded and black painted frame.

photo of reverse