Author: Jennifer Johnson

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Oval picture of a young woman standing by a tomb beneath a weeping willow, surrounded by flowering sprays tied with ribbons. At the very bottom, an inscription and verse: Willamina Rine a daughter of Christian and Barbara Rine was born November 6th 1801 and Made this sampler at Mrs. Armstrong's School, Lancaster Teach me the measure of my Days ...Thou maker of my frame I would survey life's narrow space and learn how frail I am
Buried in our Churchyard
Born in 1801 in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, Willamina Rine was twelve when she stitched this sampler at Mrs. Armstrong’s school in 1813. The archives of the Trinity Lutheran Church in Lancaster reveal that her parents, Christian and Barbara, had several other children: Henrich, Christian, Veronica, Sophia, Martha, and Elizabeth. A Fanny Rine embroidered a sampler at...
Several bands of alphabets and numerals separated by narrow geometric borders, and an inscription. In the lower half, a verse in two columns and a view of Crawford, New Hampshire; all within a stylized floral border. Embroidered in colored silks on a white linen ground.
Celebrating a new church
Julia Ann Nivers’ sampler features a townscape beneath three alphabets and a religious verse, enclosed in a border of stylized strawberries. Of the buildings depicted on the sampler, only the Hopewell Presbyterian Church can be identified. Construction on the Gothic Revival building, which still stands today in Julia’s hometown of Crawford, New York, began in...
embroidered, slavery sampler
To banish Slav’ry’s Bonds from Freedom’s Plains
Today is Emancipation Day, a holiday on which we commemorate the abolition of slavery in the United States. On June 19, 1865, Major-General Gordon Granger—who had arrived in Galveston, Texas, the preceding day with 2,000 Union troops—announced the end of the Civil War and the emancipation of the enslaved. On this day, a fitting object...
eagle landscape embroidery
O Love, Remember Me
Today marks the 138th wedding anniversary of Margaret and John Hoog, an event memorialized in this unusual sampler. While the majority of sampler makers were schoolgirls working to complete their needlework education, Margaret Hoog took needle in hand to commemorate her 1875 marriage. In the center of the sampler, instead of the usual alphabets, verse,...