Today, and for the past several days, I have been working on the biographies of the various sampler makers whose works will be included in the exhibit. Sometimes I get very lucky and when I Google a girl's name with some tidbit of objective information about her, like a birthdate, I come up with some fully researched family tree that takes me from cradle to grave of the young girl's life.

Other times, it's truly a stumper. Today I've had one of those days. The sampler in question is this one that is owned by the Newburyport Historical Society which is very generously loaning it for the exhibit. Clearly, it was made by Nancy Cushing. But who was Nancy Cushing? Partly, that's a little hard to find out because the Cushing name is a relatively common one in New England. We know that she was born about 1802. It looks to me like it says that her father's name was Joseph. She notes the births of two Williams who were her siblings, and the death of one. Intriguing is the death of Mehitabel Cobbet (or does that say something other than Cobbet--which is not at all a common name?) I thought that that Mehitable was likely her mother and that the Mehitabel Cushing was a sister named after her mother, which would be a rather likely possibility. So does the tombstone say Lydia Cushing nee Cobbet or Ldia Cushing McCobbetor McCobb et? I've tried most of my usual resources, but now I'm going for one last attempt, to randomly "fish" the census for the various Joseph Cushings to see if I can find some that seem like good prospects, and then hope to track down some vital records for those towns.

Nancy's sampler is one of a group of at least four I've found that are nearly identical and terrifically charming and artful. Another of the group was worked by Sophia Dyer who was the daughter of Caleb Dyer and Mary Randall. She was from Cape Elizabeth, a town very close to Portland, Maine. Her outstandingly preserved work is owned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art and was featured in all its splendid glory in an article by Betty Ring in The Magazine Antiques in 1988.

The period of time covered by this group is very brief, less than four years. Does that imply a school that was only open for some short period of time, or that I just haven't seen other samplers like these that span a greater range of years, or does this represent a style that evolved from an earlier one? There are some very interesting similarities between these four and some others, but it's very hard to know what their significance--if any--is.  And how many times will I say that?