What's in Your Local Museum?

Sarah Marie Jacques, 1820
Milwaukee Public Museum

The Sampler Archive Project (funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities) is working to establish a massive database of embroidered samplers worked in the United States to aid the study of women's history.  Currently they are soliciting the location of samplers.  I wonder what is in your local smaller ethnographic or city museum, historical society or art museum?  I stumbled across a set of samplers in the Milwaukee Public Museum today as well as samplers in some very small historical societies that I was looking for - one that was known to exist but had disappeared.  Clearly the last known owner had given it to the society.

Maybe you can check out what is local to you and help the Archive project locate more pieces!  The downloadable form is on their website under downloads.  While you are at it, duplicate your report and sent it to the Colonial Dames.  They were behind the publication of American Samplers by Bolton and Coe in the early part of the last century.  That tome is still used today by historians to find samplers and names for regions.  It has limited pictures and it is a struggle to find out where the sampler is now, but knowing that a girl of a particular family did one is a great help when trying to piece together history.