More Sorting Portland Samplers

I need to add a caveat to yesterday's blog. So far as I can tell, to date there are no known samplers from Elizabeth's time at Derby Academy. The silk embroidery done there under her tutelage featured trees that changed colors in horizontal bands that were softly shaded. The trees on the two samplers I included yesterday are not like that. It's very hard to know what that means--if anything.  If you have seen a sampler likely done at the Hingham/Derby Acdemy between about 1796-1803, let me know!

Today I'm going to talk about another group of Portland samplers, slightly larger and much less problematic since one of them very kindly names the teacher, but interestingly, not a teacher that has been previously identified by newspaper ads.

When I first began to plan the sampler exhibit at the Saco Museum, I advertised in Maine Antiques Journal, looking for Maine samplers/needlework in private collections. (I'm still looking!!!) I was very fortunate to hear from several people including the owner of the sampler pictured here:

This sampler, as you probably can see, says that it was made in the school of and for Sally Perry.  Like other early Portland samplers, it has a stylized rose border with a wandering, rather unrealistic stem. It includes an attractive scene, lots of useful genealogical information and the name of the maker. It was apppreantly intended as a gift for her teacher by Mary Lewis. Sally Perry married in August of 1807 and closed the school where Mary did this work.

This next one was made by Eleanor Douglass and was very kindly brought to my attention by her descendant.

The quality of the picture is not good because it as a scan from a book called Father Bond of Kohala by Ethel Damon that was published in the 1920s. The book stated that the sampler was owned by the maker's daughter, Ellen, who married a missionary to Hawaii. At that time (the 1920s) the sampler was said to be in the collection of a museum in Hawaii. I've gone to some length to track it down, without any success. Eleanor's widower father married Sally Perry's sister three years before this sampler was stitched.

The third one in the group is this one made by Abigail Horton. It's pretty easy to see how similar it is to the others. It appears in A Gallery of American Samplers by Glee Krueger, #55 on page 44. I don't know where it is currently located.

The last one I've seen so far is this one which I found for sale at a northern Massachusetts antique shop.

It clearly matches well with the others.

From all of this we now know that Sally Perry was born March 21, 1789 in Milford, Massachusetts. Not too long after her birth the family moved to Waterford, Maine where her father died in 1793. Sometime in about 1805, the date on Eleanor's sampler, Sally opened a school in Portland, probably to help support her mother and siblings. Students at her school made distinctive and very attractive samplers that followed a pattern that may have recently been established at yet another Portland school: Large sized samplers with genealogical information, stylized rose borders, a swag of flowers, a bow, and a landscape scene at the bottom.  The earliest known sampler from that other school, which I have yet to talk about, was completed on December 30, 1804, making it, at least, the one with the earliest date, so far as I know. The other possibility is that both Sally's work and that of the other school are based on the ones I showed you yesterday and attributed to Mrs. Dawes Academy.

Are you aware of others? Please let me know!