Highlights Archives
Museum's Sampler Collection Goes Online
From the 17th century to the late 19th century young girls learned embroidery skills by creating samplers. They would use these skills later in life to create fancy needlework or simply mark linens so they could be sorted correctly after being washed. Proud parents often showed off the finished samplers by having them framed and hung in the parlor. Supposedly, gentlemen admirers judged a future wife's skill at sewing by perusing these samplers.
The heyday for samplers in the United States occurred between 1780 and 1840, so not many were made in Wisconsin. Ohio seems to be the state furthest west where girls regularly did sampler work. Still a number of New England and New York families brought samplers with them when they moved to Wisconsin. Women may have brought their own, but more likely these samplers represented the work of their mothers or grandmothers and served as mementoes of those left behind.
The Wisconsin Historical Museum recently put its collection of 64 samplers online, many of them brought west by early Wisconsin immigrants. Only two have documented histories of being made in Wisconsin. Both of those date to the 1870s and were made in Catholic schools. Most visitors to the collection will probably want to look at all of the samplers, but the collection can also be viewed by date, by type, or by the country or state where the maker lived.
 Be sure to see the museum's two most spectacular samplers. One (pictured at right) was made in 1793 by Betsy Manchester (1782-1847) of Providence, Rhode Island, at the Polly Balch School. Betsy's sampler includes several people in period dress and the customary floral border with undulating edge found on many Balch samplers. Her husband and daughter brought it with them to Fox Lake, Wisconsin, in the 1850s. The other (pictued above) was a map sampler made by Cecilia Lewis (1791-1855), probably at a girl's boarding school in Pleasant Valley, New York. The map, dated 1809, shows the first 17 states and the Great Lakes area. Land that would later become Wisconsin is marked "Chippewa" and "Outagamie" for the Native Americans living there. Cecilia brought the sampler with her to Madison in 1855. After she died on December 12 of that year, it passed to her daughter. Both samplers were donated to the museum by the makers' great-granddaughter.
The practice of sampler making died out in the late 19th century. Within a few decades collectors began acknowledging them as wonderful forms of folk art from the country's early national period.
:: Posted February 11, 2008
|
