Last night I got quite a bit further into a rather mind-numbing but seemingly necessary project. I'm still trying hard to prove--one way or the other--that the largest group of Portland-made samplers I've identified is or is not connected to the best known school of the era when they were created--1804-1820. The school is the one run by the Misses Martin. I know that none of "my" sampler makers from the group appear on the list, but the project has been to Google each girl on the list with the word "sampler" after her name, and see what comes up. It's a lot like fishing. There are over five hundred girls' names on the list. Every now and then, I get a hit--the girl's name associated with a sampler made by a girl with that name.

The real question is--is it the right girl? Many of the names are a bit ubiquitous.  Not all of them, of course. Unfortunately, I hardly ever get hits on the less common names. I am now coming very close to the end of the list. I have only had one hit that I knew was the right girl and her sampler didn't strongly relate to other Portland samplers. I did make a tiny and interesting discovery, however, but its significance eludes me. Maybe there isn't any.

I mentioned previously the sampler of Deborah Gordon. Hers is actually the earliest in the group I'm focusing on right now. I've had a lot of email correspondence with the owner of that sampler and he's obviously a talented genealogist. He sent me a family tree for Deborah. She died very young, shortly after her marriage. However, Deborah's brother married and had several daughters: Deborah, Margaret, Susan and Huldah, and all of them, it turns out, appear on the Misses Martins' list of day scholars, students who attended during the day but did not board at the school.

The Misses Martin began to take day scholars in 1812--much too late for the Deborah Gordon listed to be "my" sampler maker, so it seems very nearly certain that the Deborah Gordon listed is actually her niece. It would be interesting to draw some conclusion from this discovery like that her brother decided to send his daughters to Misses Martins's school because his sister had previously attended there. I just don't think it's possible to assume that.

Tonight I should be finishing with the list, for what that's worth. It seems more like an exercise in crossing the t's and dotting the i's than one that was likely to lead to some marvelous aha! moment. Hope springs eternal.

On a more cheerful note, this morning I finally finished compiling the list of objects that will be in the exhibit: over 130, with 115 samplers. I think that makes it a rather large exhibit. It's been feeling that way for quite a while: large and complicated, trying to pin down bios on all those girls and discover the connections that link some of them. It's nice to get one more part of the project taken care of.