Rare Needlework Sampler, Jane Likens (1812-1880), Shepherdstown, (West) Virginia, dated 1822, Dated 1818. Worked with silk threads on linen in rice, chain and cross-stitches. Inscribed: Virtues the chiefest beauty of the minb/The noblest ornament of human kinb/Virtues our safe guarb anb our guibing star/That stirs up reason when our senses err Jane Likens is my/Name virginia is my/Station shepards town/Is my dwelling place &/Christ is my salvaio/n Jane Likens workeb this inthe eleventh year/of her age 082 Schoolmistress: probably Elizabeth Pierce. 21 1/2 by 16 inches (26 threads to the inch).
Provenance: From the collection of James F. Scott, Charlottesville Virginia. Sold at Sotheby's January 2013
Connie Bergendoff, Old Lyme, New Hampshire, January. 1975


This information from Sotheby's Catalog notes from sale January 25, 2013.

Exhibited and Literature: LACMA, Jane Likens pp. 142-145, figs. 67 and 68
During the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, a few wool embroidered samplers were worked in parts of Virginia, Kentucky, and Pennsylvania. The practice of embroidering with wool threads, however, was not common. Mary Ann Asbery's wool stitches have been embellished with small amounts of glossy silk that her schoolmistress would have provided. 1 The embroidery patterns shown here, such as the flower basket and the twin wreaths enclosing her name and age, suggest a possible Quaker influence, although the winged cherub stitched above the date is not identified with Quaker needlework. The small ship and anchor imposed above the pictorial scene, an uncommon American motif, are reminiscent of English sampler embroidery. There is evidence that Mary Ann Asbery lived in Tazewell County, Virginia.2 She may be the Mary Ann Asbery who, at the age of sixteen, married John Brooks on May 31, 1821. 3

1. Krueger, Gallery of American Samplers, 16.
2. John Newton Harman, Annals of Tazewell County, Virginia, vol. 1 (Richmond, VA: W.C. Hill Printing Co., 1922),67.
3. Marriage Records, Tazewell County. This information is courtesy Nellie White Bundy, director of the Historic Crab Orchard Museum and Pioneer Park, Inc., Tazewell, VA. I am grateful for her kind assistance.

During the spring of 1822, Jane Likens of Virginia was diligently working her needle in and out of a crumpled linen square. At the same time, the Farmer's Repository, staunchly favoring education for both sexes, admonished parents to: Keep [their] children at school if possible, and take care not to find fault against the school master in their presence. Some people are always complaining of the school master or mistress. Let the school be ever so well kept they will be dissatisfied. If your children complain ten chances to one they are in the wrong and should you wish to injure them you cannot do it more effectually than to join with them against their master.1 Reminiscent of schoolgirl embroideries stitched throughout the colonies, Jane's sampler is based on the band patterns and deeply arcaded floral motifs of another age, enclosed within a traditional strawberry border. The terraced ground, fringed with an ascending row of pines, is topped by a brick Georgian house-a sampler format that may have originated in the Delaware River Valley. An early version of this style may be seen on Elizabeth Stine's Philadelphia sampler (fig. 13). Jane Likens completed her designs and alphabets with a certain degree of precision. However, within the several lines of the verse and the inscriptions that follow, she reveals a difficulty in forming particular letters and spacing the words properly. In several instances, the letter b has been substituted for d, as in the words mind and kind. Following each of these, she has attempted to stitch, in black, a capital f, apparently to begin working the word fane. One of these letters has been inscribed in reverse. In addition, Jane has exhibited some confusion stitching the date, for she has inscribed in pale buff silk a zero instead of a one: 082-. The last number was removed in later years to disguise her actual age, evidence that the samplermaker lived to maturity. An intermixing of the black silk threads with pale beige has made a portion of this strip virtually invisible. Many of these miscalculations could be attributed to youthful fingers, or the lack of close supervision, for similar stitching errors are seen on an infinite number of American samplers. However, Jane's needlework betrays many of the classic symptoms of the learning disability called dyslexia. If such was the case, this suggests her embroidered sampler lettering was learned with frustration, and her difficulty reading would have shadowed her later years. In spite of the dearth of southern schoolgirl samplers, schoolmistresses were apparently available to affluent parents. In local Jefferson County newspapers, teachers of private schools advertised a variety of needlework classes, academic subjects, and other polite accomplishments. Schools for children, probably young men, were well established by 1762, including German language schools. The earliest church records in Jefferson County were written in German.2 In the art of samplermaking, however, Jefferson County lagged behind its northern neighbors. In June 1778, Captain Alexander Dandridge of Jefferson County met young Sally Wister and her family, who lived along the Wissahickon Creek in Pennsylvania while the British occupied Philadelphia admiring her sampler, which was in full view: "He wished I would teach the Virginians some of my needle wisdom," she wrote. "They were the laziest girls in the world." In typical schoolgirl fashion, Sally also described Dandridge: "His person [was] more elegantly formed than any I ever saw; tall and commanding, his features extremely pleasing."3 Although no specific female academy has yet been identified in Shepherdstown, where Jane Likens attended school, two other young girls, Elizabeth Towne and Lucretia C. Reynolds, inscribed the name of the town on their samplers, dated 1820 and 1822.4 The absence of either surname on the 1820 census suggests that they may have been pupils of a boarding school in Shepherdstown.5 In September of 1811, the Charles Town Academy notified readers of the Farmer's Repository that they had "engaged a lady to instruct young ladies in needlework."6 Mr. and Mrs. Peerce's Young Ladies' Academy of Charles Town, in 1813, offered all the useful branches of needlework and polite literature. An obscure reference in Danske Dandridge's history of the region informs us that around 1791, John Pearce returned to teach school in Shepherdstown, "for a span of more than thirty years."7 While it is evident the academy was actually located in Charles Town, Dandridge and other historical writers treat the two neighboring towns with a great degree of informality, as if they were one. It is also reasonable to assume that John Pearce and Mr. Peerce are one and the same. Traditionally, as has been noted, schools tended to be impermanent. In this instance, it is possible that the school was moved to smaller, more satisfactory quarters, in the village of Shepherdstown, for by 1820, Elizabeth Peerce (or Pierce) was a widow. The census records that one boy and two girls under the age of ten were in residence at her home, probably boarding students. Such circumstantial evidence makes it reasonable to assume that schoolmistress Elizabeth Pierce instructed Jane Likens in the needle arts, and she may also have enlightened Elizabeth Towne and Lucretia Reynolds.8 Maria Jane Likens, born December 11, 1812, was the daughter of Thomas Likens and Mary Richardson. Sometime after 1815, they moved to neighboring Charles Town, where Thomas Likens, a prosperous shoemaker, became very active in the affairs of the Presbyterian Church. In1820, there were twenty-two persons living under his protection.9 On June 19, 1836, Maria Jane married Thomas Alexander Moore (b.1803), a widower with a young son.10 They became parents to six children. In 1840, Thomas Moore was appointed clerk of the court of Jefferson County, a position of great esteem, which he held until his death in 1889. It was in his courtroom that the insurgent John Brown was tried and found guilty of treason. During the Civil War, Thomas Moore, as clerk, was responsible for the removal of the most valuable papers and court records, taking them to Lexington in a horse-drawn wagon for safekeeping. 11 Maria Jane Likens Moore died on May 5, 1880, at the age of sixty-eight.12

1. Farmer's notice in Farmer's Repository, Charles Town, February 19, 1823.
2. Danske Dandridge, Historic Shepherdstown (Charlottesville, VA: Michie Company, 1910), 53. See also Journal of the Jefferson County Historical Society, vol. 1 (December 1935): 28. Mose Hoge's school for boys opened in May of 1792. See also Betty Ring, "For Persons of Fortune Who Have Taste," Journal of Early Southern Decorative Atts, vol. 3, no. 2 (November 1977): 1-3. Ring discusses the puzzling absence of any recognizable body of Southern needlework, citing climate, an agrarian society, and the tutorial system of educating children as possible causes. The lack of competition within a classroom situation, as in New England for example, may explain the absence of Southern needlework.
3. Albert Cook Meyers, ed., Sally Wister's Journal, 1777-1778 (Philadelphia, PA: Ferris and Leach, 1902), 159. See also Dandridge, Historic Shepherdstown, 313, 314. Sally Wister's sampler is in the collection of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, PA; see Ring, "Samplers and Pictorial Needlework," 1424.
4. Bolton and Coe, American Samplers, 213, 231.
5. Journal of the Jefferson County Historical Society, vol. 1 (December 1935): 29.
6. Farmer's Repository, October 4,1811, and October 21, 1813. I am indebted to Frank Horton, former director of the Museum of Early Southern Decorative Arts, Winston-Salem, NC, for bringing this important newspaper advertisement (October 21) to my attention. It is the key to the puzzle. The October 21 advertisement ends with the words "For further particulars enquire of Dr. Cramer, or of Mr. Peerce at the Academy." Dr. Samuel Cramer became Jane Likens's father-inlaw. The use of Dr. Cramer (the town's most prominent physician) as a reference would have assured the respectability of Mr. and Mrs. Peerce. In the census of 1820, Dr. Cramer is shown to have three daughters under the age of ten, and three between the ages of ten and sixteen. These older girls were probably students of Mr. and Mrs. Peerce in 1813, in Charles Town. The younger children mayhave attended school with Jane in Shepherdstown. The advertisement also proclaims that "needlework will be taught by Mrs. Peerce, to which she will add, if required painting in water, and body colors." A word here about the unusual reference to "body colors." In the American Dictionary of the English Language by Noah Webster, 1828, under the word "body," definition twelve, we find this explanation: "Among painters, colors bear a body, when they are capable of being ground so fine, and of being mixed so entirely with oil, as to seem only a very thin oil of the same color." With this in mind we can then interpret the advertisement to mean that Mrs. Peerce taught both watercolor and oil painting. This terminology, however, is unique. It is the only time I have seen it used in the hundreds of newspaper advertisements that I have studied in documenting this material.
7. Dandridge, Historic Shepherdstown, 340.
8. Federal Census, Shepherdstown, Virginia, 1820.
9. Maria Jane Likens Moore's date of birth and death are recorded on her gravestone in Edgehill Cemetery, Charles Town. The remains of Thomas Likens and Mary Richardson Likens were interred at the foot of their daughter's grave. According to the Martinsburg Gazette, April 20, 1843, Thomas was sixty-six years old when he died. His marker, incorrectly inscribed 1750, should more accurately read 1777. The Likens property at 141 and 142 German Street, Shepherdstown, was brought to my attention by Jean A. Elliott, public-service librarian at Shepherd College, Shepherdstown, V A, in her letter dated August 14, 1975. I am indebted to Jean Elliott for her kind assistance. It is difficult to determine the exact number of children in the Likens family; see Federal Census, Charles Town, Virginia, 1820, 1850. See also Millard Keshler Bushong, Historic Jefferson County (Boyce, VA: Carr Publishing Co., 1972), 117, 120,216,570, and 571. See also Farmer's Repository, February 21, 1821.
10. Martinsburg Gazette, July 7,1836. I am indebted to the clerks, particularly Sarah Humston, in the Court House at Charles Town, WV, for their expert assistance, and to the late Rev. Lester Link, for helping me solve the problem of Jane's identification. Her name, Maria Jane Likens, had been changed to Maria Ann Likens when the records were copied long ago. It was Link who turned to the original documents to find the error.
11. Martinsburg Gazette, July 7, 1836. See also Bushong, Historic Jefferson County, 213. I am indebted to Ann Moore Cross, Jane's great-great-granddaughter, who recalled Jane's name as being pronounced "Mar-eye-a" rather than "Mar-ee-a" Jane. Ann tracked me all over Jefferson County with fragments of information, for which I thank her.
12. Edgehill Cemetery, Charles Town, West Virginia.

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