Today, between interruptions from the annual book sale which is now on its last day, I worked a little on one of the thoughts that I had over the weekend. Back to the Portland samplers groups!

Here are the names of the girls who made samplers belonging to the largest group I have identified: Eliza Clapp, 1804; Betsey Wheelwright, 1804; Deborah Gordon, 1804; Lydia Dutch, 1805; Sally Adams, 1805; Martha Wilder, 1805; Amelia Lowell, 1806; Joanna Poole, 1807; Mary Richards, 1808; Mary A. Twombley, 1817; Eliza Tukey, 1817; Mary W. Merrill, 1817; Elizabeth Mountfort, 1820. Here is a picture of Joanna Poole's sampler which is very typical of the group.

Hers is owned by the Maine Historical Society which has a very nice collection of Maine samplers. Most--but not all- of the group are genealogical with the format always the the same, naming each child, first and last names, listing the parents, but not the maiden name of the mother. The earliest of the group have a stylized queen stitch border; the later ones have a more naturalistic rose border. Most of the genealogical ones have a pair of tombs at the bottom, some with intitals of deceased. All of them have a queen stich floral swag or other floral motif near the bottom, next to the maker's name. All of them included the girl's age: "Aet", name Portland, and specify the exact date of completion rather than just a year when the sampler was finished.

Some thought provoking points: the samplers span a wide range of years, from 1804-1820 which eliminates many of the teachers that operated schools only briefly--or seems to eliminate them! Look again at the dates listed up above. Is there a significance to the two clusters of dates separated by a full nine years? It's impossible to know. It could just be a quirk of the search. Maybe I just haven't come across any from the missing years. Maybe the teacher started using a vastly different style for nine years and then returned to this (unlikely, I suspect), or maybe she taught, retired for a while and then went back to teaching.

Of more importance, none of the girls appear on the previously mentioned Misses Martins' list of students. It's getting to be a very large group and the fact that none are on the list certainly begins to look like less and less of a coincidence. Ealier today I worked on my new idea that I mentioned at the outset. I wondered if I could connect any of the girls to teacher Rachel Hall Neal through the marriage of her siblings or those of her brothers. I was able to find a very nice list of her eight siblings and found no handy connection there. I'm still working on discovering the siblings of her husband, John. I do know that one of the girls, Amelia Lowell, later married Rachel's brother-in-law after his first wife died. It's another one of those intriguing little coincidences--did Amelia know Rachel's brother-in-law because Rachel was her teacher--or did she know him from some place else?

My current thought on coincidences is that if several accumulate they become more than coincidences. But, unfortunately, right now I don't have several! A bit later this week I plan to buy a one day subscription to www.prices4antiques.com and search there for Maine samplers that have been sold in the past several years. I always have this sense that the Rosetta stone of Portland samplers is just narrowing eluding me and if I press on, there it will be!