Cornelia Fretz

A delightful little sampler, this was made by Cornelia Fretz when she was 7 years old (“in her 8th year”) and living in Solebury, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. It was likely one of her first needlework projects; it begins with alphabets and finishes with an endearing pictorial scene and her inscription. 

There is much information published regarding the Fretz family, Pennsylvania Germans with deep roots in the area. Cornelia was the 11th of 12 children and was born on New Year’s Day, 1829. Her parents were Philip Fretz (1789-1851) and Elizabeth (Stover) Fretz (1790-1870). The family resided in Solebury, and Philip was a fuller (involved in the preparation of cloth) and dyer as well as a farmer. The family homestead, “Fleecydale” was erected in 1811, north of Carversville, and included a fleece or carding mill, which remained well known in the area for over a century. 

Cornelia’s mother, Elizabeth (Stover) Fretz, was noted as, “a great favorite with birds, not canaries or caged birds, but wild birds, hundreds of them, free to come and go as they pleased. She could call them to her at any time in the day, and no doubt they would have flown to her at any hour of the night had she called them, according to The Stover History, from A Genealogical Record of the Descendants of Henry Stauffer, by Rev A. J. Fretz, (Harleysville, PA, 1899). The description of Mrs. Fretz continues with a narrative about how she fed the wild birds with nuts on top of her sunbonnet, the wild birds of all sizes and colors alighting on her head! Our samplermaker, Cornelia, certainly came from an interesting family. She died young, at age 20, on October 28, 1849. 

Her sampler was worked in silk and linen on linen and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a molded and painted frame.