Margaret Ann Harvey

The Westtown Boarding School was established in 1799 and the samplers made there in the ensuing decades epitomize the best of Quaker school design and workmanship in America. Westtown alphabet samplers feature tightly worked lettering and motifs, arranged in carefully centered compositions; this large and handsome sampler made by Margaret Ann Harvey in 1833 is an excellent example. Along with a well-executed assortment of various alphabets, Margaret worked several small punctuation marks (at the end of the third alphabet), a uniquely Quaker characteristic. Margaret Ann Harvey entered Westtown School on November 15, 1831, and remained there until March 31, 1834; Westtown School archives indicate that she was student #2807. 

We have learned much about the life and family of Margaret Ann Harvey, who was born February 25, 1819 to Edward and Margaret (Boyle) Harvey of Philadelphia; she stitched her parents’ initials at the top of the sampler flanking the bell flower. Edward was born in 1783 in County Carlow, Ireland and was educated at Friend’s School in Clonmel and then Trinity College, Dublin. He joined the business owned by his maternal uncles in Dublin, the manufacture and sale of grey beaver fur hats that were worn by Quaker men in Ireland and England. Edward came to Philadelphia in 1804 to introduce these hats to the Quakers of Philadelphia. While there he met and fell in love with Miss Margaret Ann Boyle, a young lady from a Quaker family with roots in Ireland, the daughter of James Boyle, Esq. and Martha, his wife, of Chester County. They married at Radnor Monthly Meeting on 16 day, 6 month, 1808. Upon his death in 1858, the obituary notice published in the Philadelphia Public Ledger, states that that the young couple was said to be “the handsomest pair ever seen united in marriage in Lower Merion.” The Harvey family spent part of each year in Philadelphia at their town house on 11th Street between Market and Chestnut Streets and part of the year in Merion, outside of the city.

In 1809 Edward and Margaret traveled back to Ireland and the trip was documented by a journal written by Margaret. It was published as A Journal of a Voyage from Philadelphia to Cork in the Year of Our Lord 1809: Together With a Description of a Sojourn in Ireland many years later by a granddaughter, Dora Harvey Develin. Ms. Develin also wrote and edited other family letters into a published collection called, Leaves From the Past, in 1937. One particular letter in the collection was written by Edward Harvey to his daughter, the samplermaker, Margaret, while she was ending her time at Westtown. It instructs her to come home by stagecoach and what to do about her trunks and the portage costs. He also asks her to bring the school’s bill, which he’ll pay “as soon as convenient; being somewhat busy at present.” But other letters are also of interest: Reuben Harvey, Esq. of Cork, Ireland, an acknowledged “Irish Friend to American Freedom,” and uncle of Edward Harvey, communicated with President George Washington who conveyed the thanks of the United States Congress to the Ireland in 1783. Copies of the two publications accompany the sampler.

Although the family history is very interesting, it is the sampler itself that we find most compelling - a handsome and refined Westtown Boarding School sampler with an appealing Quaker sensibility and worked with great skill. 

The sampler was worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted and is in a fine beveled cherry frame with an outer black painted bead.