American Samplers

The earliest known American sampler was made by Loara Standish of the Plymouth Colony about 1645. By the 1700s, samplers depicting alphabets and numerals were worked by young women to learn the basic needlework skills needed to operate the family household. By the late 1700s and early 1800s, schools or academies for well-to-do young women flourished, and more elaborate pieces with decorative motifs such as verses, flowers, houses, religious, pastoral, and/or mourning scenes were being stitched. The parents of these young women proudly displayed their embroideries as showpieces of their work, talent, and status.

In recent years, samplers have become important in museum collections as representations of early American female education. Many are signed, and some are inscribed with locations and the names of teachers and schools. The emergence of large numbers of these samplers has resulted in much research in diaries, account books, letters, newspaper ads, local histories, and published commentary that is helping to illuminate the lives of women in early America.

Many early samplers do not have the letters “J” and “U” in their alphabets because they were not part of the early Latin alphabet and so the letter “I” was used for “J” and the “V” for “U.” The letter “s” is often replaced with the printers “s” which looks like the modern f.

There are 137 American samplers in the Textile Collection. The first was donated in 1886, the Margaret Dinsmoor sampler. In the 1890s the Copp Collection was received and it contained two samplers—one by Esther Copp and the other by her great niece Phebe Esther Copp. (The Copp Collection is an extensive collection of 18th-and 19th- century household textiles, costume items, furniture, and other pieces belonging to the Copps, a prosperous but frugal Connecticut family.) The earliest dated sampler in the collection was made in 1735 by Lydia Dickman of Boston, Massachusetts.

Four block alphabets of 26 letters. One script alphabet to "P"; no "J." Numbers to 4. Each row worked in one color, and all rows separated by simple geometric crossbands. Two strawberry plants to right of verse. No border. Silk embroidery thread on linen ground.
Description
Four block alphabets of 26 letters. One script alphabet to "P"; no "J." Numbers to 4. Each row worked in one color, and all rows separated by simple geometric crossbands. Two strawberry plants to right of verse. No border. Silk embroidery thread on linen ground. STITCHES: cross, Algerian eye, four-sided, upright gobelin, satin, stem, hem. THREAD COUNT: warp 26, weft 28/in.
Inscriptions:
"Now mark the Sequel May Your mind
In wiSdomS waYS true PleaSure find
Grow StronG in virtu rich in truth
And Year bY Year renew itS youth
Till in the late triumphant hoUr
The SPirit Shall the fleSh overPoWer
ThiS from itS SUfferinGS Gain releaSe
And that taKe WinG and Part in PeaCe
Sarah BaILIff'S SamPler done Nov 27 1839"
Background:
Sarah Bailiff gave her sampler to a member of Justice Alfred Moore's family at Moorefields, North Carolina, their summer home. It descended in that family until it was given to the Smithsonian. Sarah Bailiff's date of birth has not yet been identified.
Location
Currently not on view
Date made
1839
maker
Bailiff, Sarah
ID Number
TE.T12722
catalog number
T12722
accession number
238996

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