The Last Days of the Exhibit; A New find

The exhibit at the Saco Museum, "I My Needle Ply with Skill" runs for only two more days after today. After all the hard work, it's pretty sad to see it ending. Attendance has been very strong, especially given the time of year and the fact that we are in Maine. And that we've had a few snowstorms to compete with, as well.

If you have followed this (sadly negelcted) blog then you know that one of the outcomes of my research was to identify a very large--from my point of view--group of related Portland, Maine samplers. Yesterday, a friend brought me an unexpected gift, a copy of the book Samplers by Rebecca Scott who seems to be an antiques dealer in England. The last chapter of the book deals with American samplers and it includes a photograph of the sampler of Eliza Manley, completed in 1808, and yet another one for "my group" that I have, so far, attributed to the academy of Rachel Hall Neal.

Eliza Manley seems to have been the daughter of Daniel Manley, probably born in 1774 in Easton, Massachusetts. He married Catharine Fergeson and they were the parents of two children born in Easthampton, Massachusetts, Eliza on June 22, 1797. By the early 1800s, Daniel had relocated to Portland and Catharine had apparently died. [A quick observation here is that Easton is in far eastern Massachusetts, Easthampton is in western Massachusetts--not especially close by, and then we have Daniel appearing in Portland. Given his unsavory later history, perhaps he was a man who needed to get out of town--FAR out of town--frequently.] He married second Mehitable, and Portland vital records lists the birth of three more children with her before she died at age 35 in 1818. On September 2, 1816, Eliza Manley married George M. Gilliard of Eastport, Maine. She had given birth to two children by the time of her early death July 23, 1820. One of the interesting little tidbits that I discovered is that when her father died in 1837 in Portland the epitaph carved onto his gravestone read, "Portland's first bank robber"!

That sounded intriguing. Google being what it is, naturally I was able to get the backstory on Daniel with very few clicks. If you visit this link, you can read the tale, as well: strangemaine.blogspot.com/2006/06/portlands-first-bank-robber.html

Assuming that the blog is correct, it also provides some information about Daniel's employment: that he ran a small, bottom end store near the water. It seems that the men that sent their daughters to this female academy weren't always of the wealthiest sort. They were nearly always living in Portland, so Mrs. Neal perhaps didn't board her scholars but offered instruction to day students--a cheaper prospect for their parents.

Like most other samplers in the group, especially those made before 1817, Eliza's has a queen stitch border, her name is boldly spelled out, she includes the precise date of completion, and names Portland. About a third of the group have a cross stitch scene near the bottom. In almost every case where there is a scene, it features a three-storey house, a fence, and a pastoral scene. All of the samplers also include either one or two floral sprigs near the girl's name, and even after the teacher began having her students work the border in satin stitch, the sprig(s) always were done in queen stitch.

I had hoped to find a connection between Eliza and some of the other girls, or with Rachel, but I was not able to--not that that is especially surprising.

So I am back in the writing and researching mode and hopefully will be--now that I have somehow managed to fix a technical difficulty I was having with this blog and photos--writing lots more.
Don't forget that the book I My Needle Ply with Skill is available for sale on the Saco Museum website : www.sacomuseum.org