Calling All Sampler Owners! Last Delaware Sampler Documentation Day

SAMPLER ID DAY TO BE HELD AT LEWES HISTORICAL SOCIETY

The Delaware Sampler Discovery Group will host a Delaware Sampler Identification Day at The Lewes Historical Society Campus at 110 Shipcarpenter Street in Lewes, Delaware, on September 19, 2015 from 10:00 am-4:00 pm.

Please bring your eighteenth and/or nineteenth century samplers and any supporting family

Mary Rose (1821-1904)
Probably taught by Eliza McKay at the Frederica Academy
Kent County, Delaware, 1835
Image courtesy of M. Finkel & Daughter
Collection of the DAR Museum

information be photographed and documented by the Delaware Sampler Discovery Group. If you have more than two samplers, please make an appointment by contacting Ryan Grover at 302-674-2111, extension 108, or email him at rgrover@biggsmuseum.org. Volunteers will be available to help transport your samplers from the parking area on West Third Street to the documentation site.

Background

The Lewes Historical Society is partnering with the Delaware Sampler Discovery Group, which has been active for more than ten years, on a statewide initiative to locate, document, and photograph schoolgirl samplers in Delaware’s public and private collections. Two sampler ID Days were held last summer and five in 2013 (including one at The Lewes Historical Society), with funds provided by the Delaware Humanities Forum and private donors leading to the discovery of many unpublished Delaware samplers.

Another partner, the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover, DE, hosted an ID Day in June 2015 and several of the earlier identification events. In March 2014 the Biggs Museum was the site of an exhibition and three–day symposium on Delaware genealogical samplers entitled Wrought with Careful Hand: Ties of Kinship on Delaware Samplers. The exhibition was accompanied by a catalog with the same title.

Dr. Gloria Seaman Allen will research recent and future Delaware sampler discoveries for a comprehensive study of Delaware girlhood embroideries with a publication date of 2017.

For more information, contact Ryan Grover at 302-674-2111 extension 108, or rgrover@biggsmuseum.org, or Cynthia Steinhoff at 410-777-2483 or cksteinhoff@gmail.com.