A marking sampler done by a young girl in 1791.

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Size: 5.25 x 7.5"
Maker: N/A
Material: Burlap, thread.
Date: 1791
Provenance: N/A
Condition: Good condition with age discoloration of cloth. One
History: In eighteenth-century America, a girl was expected to grow up, get married, have children, and take care of a home. Because of the limits of her sphere, a girl received a very different education from that available to a boy. Indeed, before the advent of public education in the mid-nineteenth century, in order to receive any education at all a boy or a girl had to be born into the middle or upper classes and have parents who valued education enough to pay for it. Usually, a boy would be taught traditional academic subjects, while a girl might be tutored in the barest rudiments of reading and arithmetic. Instead of academic studies, girls were usually sent to schools that taught an assortment of skills considered “female accomplishments”—music, watercolor painting, comportment, manners, and sewing. As part of her preparation for the responsibility of sewing clothes and linens for her future family, most girls completed at least two samplers. The first, which might be undertaken when a girl was as young as five or six, was called a marking sampler. Marking samplers served a dual purpose: they taught a child basic embroidery techniques and the alphabet and numbers. The letters and numbers learned while embroidering a marking sampler were especially useful, since it was important that any homemaker keep track of her linens, some of her most valuable household goods. This was accomplished by marking them, usually in a cross stitch, with her initials and a number. Young girls made marking samplers either at home under the tutelage of their mother or grandmother, or at small community schools, called “dame schools” for the women—usually widows or spinsters—who ran them. The equivalent of today’s early years of elementary school, they were attended by both boys and girls. The children were taught reading and arithmetic, and in some cases both sexes participated in knitting, sewing, and sampler-making instruction. Although boys usually went on for further academic training, in many cases this was the only formal schooling a girl received.
Condition: Good condition with age discoloration of cloth. One History: In eighteenth-century America, a girl was expected to grow up, get married, have children, and take care of a home. Because of the limits of her sphere, a girl received a very different education from that available to a boy. Indeed, before the advent of public education in the mid-nineteenth century, in order to receive any education at all a boy or a girl had to be born into the middle or upper classes and have parents who valued education enough to pay for it. Usually, a boy would be taught traditional academic subjects, while a girl might be tutored in the barest rudiments of reading and arithmetic. Instead of academic studies, girls were usually sent to schools that taught an assortment of skills considered “female accomplishments”—music, watercolor painting, comportment, manners, and sewing. As part of her preparation for the responsibility of sewing clothes and linens for her future family, most girls completed at least two samplers. The first, which might be undertaken when a girl was as young as five or six, was called a marking sampler. Marking samplers served a dual purpose: they taught a child basic embroidery techniques and the alphabet and numbers. The letters and numbers learned while embroidering a marking sampler were especially useful, since it was important that any homemaker keep track of her linens, some of her most valuable household goods. This was accomplished by marking them, usually in a cross stitch, with her initials and a number. Young girls made marking samplers either at home under the tutelage of their mother or grandmother, or at small community schools, called “dame schools” for the women—usually widows or spinsters—who ran them. The equivalent of today’s early years of elementary school, they were attended by both boys and girls. The children were taught reading and arithmetic, and in some cases both sexes participated in knitting, sewing, and sampler-making instruction. Although boys usually went on for further academic training, in many cases this was the only formal schooling a girl received.