Margaret J. Burruss

ENG 241

Culture Collection Report

Dr. Thomas L. Long

The Virginia Sampler--DeWitt-Wallace Gallery

On May 30, I visited the DeWitt-Wallace Gallery, located in Colonial Williamsburg and filled with various artifacts of the well-to-do colonists from the 17th and 18th centuries and citizens of the new republic in the 19th. Among these are furniture, paintings, guns, numerous articles of pottery and everyday housewares, examples of what a lady and gentleman of wealth would have on their dressing table, as well as tools that physicians used. The list continues on and on. I found the gallery fascinating, but the exhibit that I found to be of most interest was that on Virginia samplers.

Sampler making was brought to America with the early New England settlers. At first, they were similar to English samplers, but as their popularity spread south, the techniques used to create samplers began to change. Changes such as using two threads instead of three, rectangular or square shaped samplers to make framing possible, and concentrating on the front of the design instead of mirror images of front and back, made the American samplers very distinct.

Samplers were used as a way to teach young ladies the alphabets, numbers, and verses. Samplers were also used to teach mending techniques. Young ladies of wealthy parents were taught needlework at boarding schools. The ages of the girls ranged fromm six to eighteen years old. The materials used to create these samplers were very expensive, therefore limiting the class of people who could afford to learn this skill. Having framed needlework on one's wall was a social statement that the family could afford to send their daughter to school and afford the materials to create a sampler.

Samplers are useful in helping us to understand the world these young women lived in between the 17th and 19th centuries. They often have the creator's name, age, family and location. They help us to see the differences in societies, from one region to another and the differences in times, from one century to another.

Religion was very important to the colonists during these centuries. Many samplers employed religious verses, which give us evidence of society's high moral expectations for these young girls to live in preparation for their deaths. One such sampler ended with "And Jesus bids me come." The creator of this sampler died when she was 27 years old.

Families were also important. Samplers from the period commemorated births, marriage, and deaths within the creators' families. A girl started one sampler of this type when she was six years old. When she died at seven, someone else completed the sampler, adding the memorial verse for the little girl.

Samplers were used to teach the older, more accomplished ladies Bible stories and classical writings during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. As the ladies stitched their beautiful pictures, they were told about the subjects of their samplers. Some of the accepted themes were of Palamon and Lavinia, as well as the Sacrifice of Isaac. Of all the samplers on display, this type was my favorite because the pictures were some of the most creative and beautiful I have ever seen.

Some samplers on display celebrated public events, such as the visit from Lafayette in 1824. Another commemorated the Richmond Theater fire of 1811. Instead of flames coming from the windows of the building, the creator stitched tall trees behind the theater.

An African-American male preacher created one sampler on exhibition. It was very rare for a man and rarer still for an African-American of either sex to make a sampler. The type of sampler he created was made for another man who had given him land to build a church on. This sampler was categorized as a "Respectfully Presented" sampler. Also under this category are samplers that young girls had "respectfully presented" to their parents.

We can learn so much by studying these samplers. Without these samplers, some of these girls and women would never have been remembered. Dates of births, marriages, and deaths would not be known. The types and colors of materials used give us a clear indication of what was available at each period of time that the samplers were created. We can tell where they were created by the styles used on them. These young ladies were very proud of their samplers, which were their legacy to us, their forms of discourse in their time.