Mary Ann Stauffer

May Ann Stauffer’s outstanding sampler can be appreciated on several levels. It is attributed to the renowned school of Mrs. Buchanan in Marietta, Lancaster County, Pennsylvania and offers very beautiful composition and execution, retaining its splendid original ribbon framework. The sampler is inscribed with specifics of the births of David Stauffer and his wife, Anna (Hamacher) Stauffer; David was Mary Ann’s older brother and she would have made the sampler to commemorate their marriage which took place in 1825. The sampler was likely presented to them. Samplers made for specific family members are unusual and we know of almost none made for a newly married couple, in effect celebrating that union. 

Additionally, there are two other known samplers made by the same needleworker, Mary Ann Stauffer. One is now in the Met Museum this was a present to her uncle and aunt and is stated as such in the stitched inscription). This sampler was previously in the Theodore Kapnek collection (see figure 104, A Gallery of American Samplers The Theodore Kapnek Collection by Glee Krueger).

Twenty years ago, we owned the third sampler made by Mary Ann, in 1831, and offered it in our Catalogue XXVIII (2005). Mary Ann’s three samplers closely resemble one another, and each has the original green silk ribbon with additional pale pink applique ribboning. 

Mary Ann Stauffer (1811-1896) was the daughter of Martin Stauffer (1778-1873) and his wife Maria (Kaufmann) Stauffer (1781-1838). This branch of the Stauffer family began when two young brothers emigrated from Germany to Philadelphia circa 1740, traveling then by foot to Lancaster.

In 1832, a year after Mary Ann completed her most ambitious sampler that we owned previously, she married Henry Snavley. The following information is from the Met Museum’s site:  

“Mary Ann married Henry Snavely (1801-1891) a member of another distinguished Mennonite Lancaster County family, and they had two sons and two daughters, Benjamin, Henry, Mary Ann, and Eliza. Henry Snavely owned and operated Snavely’s Mill for thirty years before giving it over to his son Henry, who apprenticed under his father and became a master miller. The close-knit Snavely children remained in the Lancaster area, and in 1860 Mary Ann and Henry lived with their son Henry and his family. The 1870 U.S. Census lists the senior Henry as retired with an estate valued at $10,000. At that time, they were living in their own home with Mary Ann’s father and a fourteen-year-old domestic servant.

“Widely known and universally respected,” Henry died on March 31, 1891, and his funeral was held at Kauffman’s Meeting House, founded by Mary Ann’s relatives. Five years later, eighty-six-year-old Mary Ann died on April 1st, 1896. Both Henry and Mary Ann were interred in Kauffman’s Mennonite Church Cemetery in Manheim, Lancaster County, the town where they had lived their entire lives.”

The sampler was worked in silk on linen and is in excellent condition. The original green and pink ribbons are in very good condition with some very slight breaks. It has been conservation mounted and is in a fine mahogany frame with a figured maple bead.