A Mystery Solved?

For many months, I’ve been operating under the working hypothesis that Mrs. Rachel Hall Neal and her daughter, Rachel Neal were the instructors for the largest group of samplers that I have identified. (I have blogged on this topic before so I’m sorry to be dwelling on it again, but new information has arisen.)

The primary reason for identifying these two ladies as the source for this iconic group of Portland samplers is that the dates when the samplers were made stretch from 1804 through at least 1820. That range of years automatically eliminates most of the potential Portland schools. The very well-recognized and well-documented Misses Martins’ school would fit and so do the Neals. No other known school works. One of the Misses Martins very helpfully published a list of pupils of their school. The list is “known to be incomplete” but no one is quite sure how incomplete it might be. Up until now, none of the samplers I’ve identified as being in the group was made by a girl who is on the list, which appeared to me to make it very likely that they were NOT the source.

That all changed late last week when I realized that a thumbnail photo of a sampler that I had received from Stephen and Carol Huber was one of the group and that the maker’s name appeared to be on the Misses Martins’ list. The problem was, I couldn’t read the date on the sampler—given that it was a tiny picture. The maker was Eliza Clapp. Appearing on the Misses Martins’ list are the three sisters, Betsey, Frances and Mary Clapp who were the daughters of wealthy Portland merchant and mariner Asa Clapp. It seemed very probable that Betsey and Eliza were one and the same. Betsey (Elizabeth Clapp) was born, I discovered, August 25, 1796.  If the sampler had the “right” date, then that would be a fairly good sign that the Misses Martins were a probable source for the samplers, even though none of the makers appear on their list.

This morning, in my email inbox, was a full-sized photo of the sampler ever so kindly sent by the Hubers. The sampler was completed January 5, 1805, clearly like the others in the group, and listed the maker’s age as ten! Asa’s daughter Elizabeth (Betsey on the list) would only have been eight and a half in January of 1805. That left three possibilities: Betsey’s birthdate was listed wrong, the age on the sampler was wrong, OR there was another Elizabeth Clapp in Portland at the same time, born a bit earlier.

I believe Asa’s daughter’s birthdate to be correct. She is one of a rather famous family and the date is documented in numerous places. It seems *unlikely* that she would be so wrong about her age on a sampler. Could there be another Elizabeth? I noticed that on the 1810 census there were two Claps in Portland: Asa and Alkanah, so I began to research Alkanah to see if he could have had a daughter Elizabeth of the right age. First I found records of the deaths of Elkanah and his wife, Elizabeth in Portland in 1810. Then I found records for the two marriages of their daughter Elizabeth (!) to John Blagge and George W. Cooley (December 5, 1835 in Portland.) Digging a bit deeper, I found her death record, March 4, 1864 in Roxbury, Mass. (Cooley was aid to have been “of Boston” which listed her birthplace as Mansfield, Mass.  Finally, Mansfield vital records and a genealogy of the Clapp family revealed that Elkanah and Elizabeth Clapp had relocated to Portland shortly after 1800. Their daughter Elizabeth—first cousin of the three daughters of Asa Clapp—was born in Mansfield November 3, 1794, making her aged ten on January 5, 1805 when SHE completed her sampler.

Unfortunately—she seems to appear on the list anyway!!!! The Misses Martins lists another set of girls with the last name Clap as being from Bath, Maine: Betsey, Almira, Abigail and Mary. Elkanah had daughters Almira and Abigail, born in Mansfield. (There’s no record for Mary but she may have been born after the Maine relocation—if she is their sister at all.) The spouses listed on the Misses Martins’ list for Almira and Abigail are the right ones for the daughters of Elkanah—so these are clearly Eliza’s sisters. BUT there is no mention of Elkanah Clap ever  living in Bath in local histories or the census. He and his family are clearly delineated on the Portland census in 1810 (the year he and his wife died.) That makes it hard for his daughters to be “from Bath” prior to his death and when Eliza’s sampler was made in 1805.

However, living in Bath, according to several local histories, was Elizabeth’s (wife of Elkanah) brother Ebenezer Clap (she was a Clap by birth, distantly related to her husband.) Ebenezer was a local lawyer and later judge and though he married in 1812, never had any children. The Clap daughters must have gone somewhere after their parents’ sudden deaths; it seems likely that they went to live with their uncle, Ebenezer, who has one girl aged 16-25 living with him in 1820 (besides other members of the household.) Both Abigail and Almira would have fit into this age category in 1820. Almira married in 1820; her sister Abigail was not wed until 1822, making it possible that she alone resided there of the three sisters (Eliza having married in 1816).

Another long-winded journey, right? What does this prove about the samplers and the school to which they can be attributed? Absolutely nothing, once again. Eliza might well have attended a Portland school prior to living in Bath and before her parents’ deaths. Her sisters and she may have attended the Misses Martins’ school after 1810 and after the sampler we know of, seen here, was made.  Or not.