Samplers11

Samplers at Pilgrim Hall Museum :
the Finale

During the 1830s, Catherine Beecher spearheaded a movement to raise the status of women by improving their education. The curriculum at Beecher’s school for young women in Cincinnati was extremely ambitious. The required course of study for the freshman class, as outlined in Sarah Josepha Hale’s Ladies Magazine for 1833, included reading, writing, spelling, composition, botany, mineralogy, geology, natural history, geography, arithmetic, geometry, history, grammar and philosophy. Fine needleworking was no longer a focus of this academic curriculum. If skills above and beyond the purely academic were desirable for social advancement, French and music (but not embroidery) were offered as electives.

Even for the less educationally ambitious, the time-consuming elaborate and well-executed sampler was falling out of favor. Popular author Lydia Maria Child, in her Girl’s Own Book of 1838 wrote: "Embroidery. This is nearly out of fashion; and I am glad it is : for it is a sad waste of time." Lydia was not quite as fierce as she sounds. She thought it wise for small girls to learn plain sewing and simple, easy types of decorative stitchery.

She was, however, much more concerned that girls should spend time playing out in the fresh air and acquiring, through games and recreational pastimes, a variety of skills that would enrich their lives.


"This game being merely a trial of strength, may be thought unsuitable to little girls; but I know that families of brothers and sisters are very fond of it." Lydia Maria Child, Girl's Own Book.		"This play ... is a healthy exercise, and tends to make the form graceful; but it should be used with moderation." Lydia Maria Child, Girl's Own Book.

As these educational and recreational changes became commonplace, the popularity of samplers plummeted. By 1840, the "Golden Age" of American samplers came to a close.

For additional information about samplers, we recommend :
Betty Ring. Girlhood embroidery : American samplers & pictorial needlework 1650-1850. New York : Alfred A. Knopf, 1993.
Ethel Stanwood Bolton and Eva Johnston Coe. American Samplers. New York : Dover Publications, 1973. (Originally published in 1921.)
Rozsika Parker. The subversive stitch : embroidery and the making of the feminine. New York : Routledge, 1984.