Concerning Samplers

Sampler made by Margaret Platt,
1736. Margaret was a cousin of the
Platt brothers who founded Plattsburgh
and the great-grandmother of Lucretia
Maria and Margaret Davidson.

As we prepare to reopen the museum in May, I have been working on some new labels for the samplers in the Weaving Room. I’ve tried to find biographical information about the girls who made the samplers and other needlework pieces in the collection—a difficult task. Like most women who lived in the 17th and 18th centuries, they left little mark on the official historical record. However, their samplers were treasured and handed down in their families until they were “discovered” by collectors in the early 20th century. In the age of the suffragette and the flapper, samplers became powerful symbols of the industry, piety, and domesticity of early American women.

Until relatively recently, needlework skills were an essential part of female education. All girls learned basic sewing skills, and some pursued more advanced embroidery. The sampler emerged sometime in the 16th century and was originally a pattern record of stitches and techniques (the term sampler comes from the Latin exemplum, or example). Colonists brought this tradition of sampler-making to North America in the 17th century, though very few examples have survived from that period. By the 18th century, distinctive sampler styles were beginning to develop, identified with specific regions and often with particular schools or teachers. However, American samplers shared common elements: alphabets and numbers, religious or moral verses, names and dates (often in the form of a family record), floral motifs, landscape scenes including people, houses, and animals, and geometric patterns.

Scenes from a Seminary for Young Ladies,
ca. 1810-20
Saint Louis Art Museum

In the years after the American Revolution, educational opportunities for girls expanded dramatically. Historians have identified this push for female education as part of an ideology they call republican motherhood. If the new nation was to survive, its citizens must be virtuous, and children’s first lessons in virtue came from their mothers. Therefore, women had to be educated in order to transmit republican values to future generations. Although the emphasis of republican motherhood was on women’s roles in the home, it opened the door for arguments in favor of broadening education for girls. As author Judith Sargent Murray wrote in 1798, “Female academies are everywhere establishing and right pleasant is the appellation to my ear.”

These new academies offered girls the chance to learn the same subjects as boys did: not just reading and writing but mathematics, geography, philosophy, and Latin. However, there was still a great emphasis on fashionable accomplishments or what were called “ornamentals”—embroidery, painting, drawing, and music. Most of the samplers that are in museum collections today were made during this post-Revolutionary period, and almost all of them were produced in schools, under the direction of a teacher.

“Miss Godchild's First Sampler,”
English print, 1793

A girl generally made her first sampler between the ages of five and nine. This would usually be a marking sampler, intended to teach basic sewing and literacy skills through the stitching of letters and numbers. In a time when household linens were extremely valuable, every sheet, napkin, pillowcase, and towel had to be marked with initials to ensure that it was returned safely from being sent out for laundering, and with numbers so that items could be rotated for even wear. If her education continued at a female academy, the young lady might then make a more decorative sampler or needlework picture. This piece might be part of an exhibition at the school, demonstrating her skill to family, friends, and local dignitaries, and would serve as an advertisement for the school. She would then bring the framed needlework home to be displayed as a sort of “diploma,” testifying to her educational and artistic accomplishments.

Colonial Revival sampler, 1917

Samplers began to fall out of the school curriculum in the late 1830s, as educational reformers argued that girls should receive the same education as boys. By the mid-19th century, they were generally found only in Catholic schools and in some frontier areas. In the 20th century, colonial-style needlework enjoyed a revival among middle-class women, who could purchase commercial patterns and kits to make their own “heirlooms.” It was at this time that collectors began to take a second look at the productions of 18th and early 19th century needlewomen. Virginia Robie, writing in House Beautiful in 1902, noted that the sampler had “not yet become a fad”; it was still lumped in with the fancywork of the Victorians and “mildly ridiculed or completely ignored.” But within a decade, the first scholarly works on samplers would appear, and they would be eagerly sought out by collectors like Alice T. Miner.


Sources:

Early works on samplers include Marcus B. Huish, Samplers and Tapestry Embroideries (1913) and American Samplers, published by the Massachusetts Society of the Colonial Dames of America in 1921. For recent scholarship, the works of Betty Ring, particularly Girlhood Embroidery and American Needlework Treasures, are invaluable.

A Symbol of Community: The Chazy M.E. Parsonage Signature Quilt

Hallie Bond examining the signature quilt

Last month I wrote about the quilt that Anna Moore Hubbell of Chazy made in the early 1800s. Now it’s time to take a look at another quilt in the Alice’s collection, also made in Chazy, but in the last years of the 19th century. This one was made by the members of the Chazy Methodist Episcopal Church in 1895, probably to raise money to support the parsonage. It is made up of 81 squares of linen fabric, each one hand-embroidered in red with four names, and with more names around the border—342 names in total. This striking quilt is a wonderful example of the signature or autograph quilts that were popular among church groups in the late 19th and early 20th century. This quilt was donated to the Alice T. Miner Museum in 2012 by Christine Lozner, who inherited it from her aunt, Sybil Mead Brown (1912-1988). Sybil was the granddaughter of John Lewis Brown (1857-1928) and Ella Case Brown (1857-1939), whose names are among those embroidered on the quilt.

Friendship quilt made in Delaware County, New York,
1846-49. Each central white cross contains a signature.

The signature quilt’s predecessor was the friendship quilt, which became common in the 1840s. Groups of women would come together to make these quilts—sometimes each woman would contribute a square that she pieced herself, and sometimes one woman would collect fabric from the group and then piece the entire quilt. In either case, each square was signed with the name of the woman who made it or donated the fabric. Friendship quilts were often made as gifts to women who were leaving their community. In the 1840s and 1850s, more and more families were setting out for new homes in the west. Most of them would never return to the places they had left, and friendship quilts were mementos that helped women feel connected to the friends they left behind. This type of quilt was also made during the Civil War to raise money to support Union soldiers.

Signature quilt made by the Maple Grove Ladies Aid Society,
York Co., Pennsylvania, 1920

Over the years, the pieced friendship quilt was joined by the embroidered signature quilt. This type of quilt was often made as a charity or church fundraiser, to raise money to build a new church, to support a minister, or perhaps to assist missionary efforts. Supporters would pay to have their name included (it cost extra to have one’s name put in the middle of a square or some other prominent position), and then the finished quilt itself might be raffled off to raise even more money. On some quilts, the names, arranged in decorative patterns, were the only embellishment. Others also included Bible verses, poetry, or embroidered depictions of the church building.


The first Methodist service in Chazy was held in 1801 at the home of Amasa Ladd. In the early days of Methodism (which had only been formally organized in the United States since 1784), communities were served by circuit riders, who traveled long distances to preach. Initially, Chazy was part of the Plattsburgh circuit, which encompassed both sides of Lake Champlain as well as part of Canada. By 1818, the number of Methodists had grown enough for Chazy to become its own circuit. The minister resided at Chazy and also served Beekmantown, West Chazy, Mooers, Champlain, and Rouses Point.


Preaching took place in members’ homes until a church was built in 1816-17. Alexander Scott, a local merchant who owned a quarry, built the stone church at his own expense. This building burned in 1855 and was replaced by a brick church, which in turn burned down in 1881. The third M.E. church (which is now the Chazy town offices) was dedicated in October 1881. The first parsonage was the old home of Solomon Fisk, a log cabin that had been plastered over; in the early 1850s a brick parsonage was built on the other side of Fisk Road.

The second M.E. parsonage

Methodist ministers were paid according to the size of their families—$80 each per year for the preacher and his wife, plus $24 for children over sixteen and $15 for each child under sixteen. This was not very much money, even in the 19th century, so the congregation would come together to provide additional support. For example, in 1829, the Rev. Mr. Brayton hosted a “donation party” at the parsonage, to which church members were encouraged to bring contributions of butter, flour, firewood, and money. Since this quilt specifically references the parsonage, it’s possible that it was made to raise funds to repair or make improvements to the building.

Signature quilts are of interest to historians because of the wealth of information about when, where, and by whom they were made. They provide a snapshot of a specific community at a particular moment. The Chazy M.E. quilt includes the names of three members of William Miner’s family: his grandparents Clement S. and Lydia Miner, and his uncle John D. Miner. All three were deceased at the time the quilt was made, which suggests that signature quilts also were sometimes used as a way for people to memorialize family members who had died.

The Chazy M.E. Parsonage quilt will be on display during Museum Weekend, June 6 and 7. Perhaps you will find the names of your ancestors on it!

Information about the Chazy M.E. Church comes from Nell Jane Barnett Sullivan and David Kendall Martin, A History of the Town of Chazy (Burlington, 1970), and from Bob Cheeseman, Chazy Town Historian.

If you would like to learn more about friendship quilts, “Piecing Together a Community: A Late Nineteenth-Century Friendship Quilt from Peterboro, New York,” by Shirley Morgan, is a good place to start.

Quilt images are from the International Quilt Study Center and Museum, another great resource for quilt research.

Lena's Crazy Quilt

Over the 87 years The Alice has operated as a museum there have been times when interesting objects and letters came into the collection as donations or bequests. In fact, a few weeks ago we happily accepted the personal correspondence and photographs from Dr. George W. Clark's estate here in Chazy. The museum has become a repository for genealogy and local history information as well as for some objects and textiles donated by local families. It is a wonderful textile I will focus on in this article.

In 1983 the Blow family lost their matriarch, Lena. Lena M. (O'Lena) Blow was born in Chazy, NY on November 12, 1896 - the daughter of Napoleon and Eliza O'Lena. She went to school in the little red school house that William Miner attended, and lived in the area her entire life. Around 1916 (the year her wedding dress was made) she married Edward Blow and started a family. She was an accomplished seamstress and made her and her six children's clothing as well as many beautiful quilts, employing sewing and needle craft skills she learned early in life.

On November 21, 1983 Lena passed away and soon after her children donated a few of her possessions to The Alice to be kept and enjoyed by future generations of visitors. The two objects donated in 1983 are Lena's wedding dress and slip. The garments joined two other textiles previously donated to the museum, both are blankets made by Lena Blow. One of these she started making when she was just nine years old, a diamond popcorn stitch bedspread. The other is a colorful crazy quilt with voluminous embroidery stitching and writing.

The crazy quilt is signed "LO" and "Apr. 10, 1908 Sciota, NY". Like most crazy quilts it consists of a quilt top mounted directly to backing with no batting in between. The backing in this case also serves as a ruffle on three sides of the quilt and is a solid rose colored cotton. The pieces consist of a wide variety of colors, shapes, sizes and patterns - and appear to be made up of mostly silk scraps. The scraps were pieced together into nine blocks of similar size and then sewn together along with a long narrow block running the width of the blanket at the bottom. This quilt top was then backed with the rose colored cotton.

Lena's crazy quilt is a striking piece and draws the eye as soon as you walk into the Sheraton Room where it is exhibited. But it's the detail in stitching that brings you in for a closer look. Lena used a large number of different embroidery stitches joining every piece. She also wrote a few messages, including "May You Be Happy" and embroidered flowers and birds. Perhaps her mother saved pieces from various sewing projects over the years and finally handed the scraps over to Lena to create something for her bed. My grandmother made quilts consisting of pieces that I could recognize from clothing she sewed for me and my siblings over the years. It's fun to look closely and see a familiar color and pattern that reminds you of the past. I imagine Lena lying in bed and tracing her family history through these bits of fabric.

This weekend is the Champlain Valley Quilter's Guild Show with hundreds of hand made quilts and wonderful craft items to enjoy. To experience a wide range of amazing fabric art made by local people, this is the show to see... Who knows, there may even be a few crazy quilts there! It's at Bailey Avenue School in Plattsburgh this Saturday and Sunday 10am - 4pm. If you want to see the true details in Lena Blow's quilt, come to The Alice for a tour soon.

And may you be happy!