Patty Farnum

Marking samplers were often the first sewing project of young girls who were taught to stitch the alphabet and numbers. Many attended dame schools - small, informal neighborhood schools or classes run by older women in their homes, teaching basic reading, writing, and math, along with essential domestic skills like sewing. Their pupils were primarily young children. 

Patty Farnum began her sampler with upper case alphabets and progressed to a tightly worked inscription of her birth and then a pictorial band of flower branches and an arrangement of flowers in a patterned basket. She began her numerical progression, 1 through 3, at the end of the first alphabet and then continued it in empty spaces in the pictorial band. 

Patty was born on May 10, 1797 to Stephen and Susan (Jackman) Farnum of Boscowan, a town just north of Concord. The History of Concord From Its First Grant in 1752 … by Nathaniel Boulton (Concord, 1852), traces the Farnum family roots in Concord (originally called Penacook Plantation) from the 17th century. In 1819, Patty married Capt. Abiel Carter (1796-1856) and they had five children. Patty died in 1855 and is buried in Maple Grove Cemetery in Concord. 

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