Mary Bowker

A charming little sampler,  this was made by Mary Bowker who was age 9 (“in the 10th year of her age”) and living in Pembroke, a small town located about 13 miles north and a little west of Plymouth. Her neatly stitched inscription provides the specifics about her birth date, her age and her town, ending with her initials worked in the scripted alphabet that she practiced in the uppercase alphabet above. 

Mary’s ancestry is well documented in The Bower Family in America by Frances Sterling Drisko (Heritage Books, 2015) and photocopies of Mary’s line are included in the file that accompanies the sampler. Her great, great, great grandfather, James Bowker, emigrated circa 1680, settling in Bryants Corner, Massachusetts (now Norwell). Generations later, Mary was born to Liberty and Sarah (Gurney) Bowker. The family removed to the western part of Massachusetts and was living in Berkshire County by 1830. In 1832, Mary married Robert Sturtevant (1801-1888) in Savoy and they had one child, a son born in 1834. Mary died in 1858 in Savoy. 

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