Schoolgirl samplers of Dover, New Hampshire

Magazine Antiques, August, 1997 by Rita F. Conant

The group of samplers attributable to Sophia's tutelage in Dover are all stitched with silk thread on a ground of olive green linsey-woolsey, a combination of linen and wool that was also sometimes used as a sampler ground in Portsmouth at about the same time. With one exception (Pl. II), all ten samplers have a wide border in which luxuriant flowering vines grow from baskets in each lower corner, while at the center of the top border is a basket of flowers. In most cases a pair of large birds occupies the top corners, with a smaller pair in the bottom border, along with a central motif and a pair of stylized trees, their branches arranged in tiers. The script alphabet in particular is similar on all the samplers.

A number of the motifs in the Dover samplers, such as the pairs of birds, baskets of flowers, and vine and floral borders, often appear on samplers of Quaker origin. In this light, it is important to remember that Sophia Wyatt's mother was a Quaker and that Sophia wrote in her autobiography, "At an early age, my lot was cast with the people called Friends."(15) The influence of Quaker work on the impressive designs Sophia developed for her students seems undeniable. A remarkable and artistic woman, Sophia Cushing Hayes Wyatt secured her place in history through the excellence of the needlework executed by her students.

1 The whereabouts of the other two are presently unknown: one of them, worked by Hannah Nichols (1790-1818) in 1800, is illustrated in The McCalls Book of America's Needlework and Crafts (Simon and Schuster, New York, 1976), p. 12; the other, by Jane Littlefield (1797-1832), 1810, is illustrated in Maine Antique Digest, March 1986, p. 20-C.

2 See James S. Cushing, Genealogy of the Cushing Family (Perrault Printing Company, Montreal, 1905).

3 Sophia Hayes Wyatt, Autobiography of a Landlady of the Old School (Boston, 1854), p. 1.

4 Ibid., pp. 6, 9-10.

5 Ibid, pp. 12, 49.

6 Katherine F. Richmond, John Hayes o Dover, N.H., a Book of His Family, (Tuttle Publishing, Rutland, Vermont, 1936), vol. 1, p. 293.

7 Ibid.

8 Wyatt, Autobiography, pp. 282-284.

9 Ibid., p. 47.

10 Ibid., p. 48.

11 Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers and Pictorial Needlework, 1650-1850 (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1993), vol. 1, p. 236.

12 Wyatt, Autobiography, p. 285.

13 John Scales, "Historical Memoranda Concerning Persons and Places in Old Dover, N.H.," ms. 288 (Dover Historical Society, Dover, New Hampshire, 1900).

14 Vital Records of Dover, New Hampshire, 1686-1850, comp. John Scales and Fred E. Quimbey (1894; Heritage Books, Bowie, Maryland, 1977), p. 100.

15 Wyatt, Autobiography, p. 199.

RITA F. CONANT, the curator of the Portsmouth Athenaeum in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, is the coauthor with John F. LaBranche of In Female Worth and Elegance: Sampler and Needlework Students and Teachers in Portsmouth, New Hampshire 1741-1840, published in 1996.