MANY people today have a precious sampler hanging on their wall, or tucked away in a drawer, which was made 200 years ago by a young, usually female, member of their family. Samplers are a great way of making connections across the generations, and usually leave the living marvelling at the intricate stitching of those who had gone before.
Samplers had many uses. They were a teaching aide, particularly in Sunday schools, and so many of them have a God-fearing theme to them, featuring improving verses.
Mainly, though, samplers were a way of teaching young girls how to sew and of providing them with examples of the stitches they had been taught for future reference.
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“Some samplers are stitched with different types of crown or coronets to represent a king, earl, baron or marquis etc,” says Gillian Hunt, in Gainford, who we’ve turned to for advice. “These were teaching the stitcher how to mark linen before it was sent to the laundry, and so these girls were being prepared for a life of service.
“There are examples stitched by boys, although rare, and needlework was considered therapeutic for wounded soldiers.”
A couple of weeks ago, we asked for readers to send in their family samplers. Here’s a sample of some of them…
The central verse is from an 18th Century nonconformist hymn written by Philip Doddridge.
“She is my great-grandmother,” says Margaret Moyes. “She later married Robert Imeary and bore him nine children of whom only my grandfather lived into adulthood.
“Robert Imeary had an alkali works in South Shields employing 70 men. He was a prominent councillor and alderman after whom Imeary Street in South Shields is named.
“Sadly the deaths of his eight children can be linked to the appalling pollution caused by the several alkali works in Shields at the time.”
The alkali industry used the Leblanc process to turn salt into hydrochloric acid which was vital for making soap, glass and textiles. However, it was one of the most polluting industries of its day, giving off acidic gases and producing a useless acidic salt cake by-product which was spread on fields where it gave off hydrogen sulphide – the rotten eggs smell.
The countryside around an alkali works was usually devastated and the workers wrapped layer upon layer of flannel around their faces to keep the acid out of their lungs.
In 1863, the industry became subject to the Alkali Act, which was the first piece of modern legislation to attempt to clear up air pollution.
“Poor Mary Anna's life cannot have been very happy,” says Margaret. “One hopes she is now experiencing what the hymn calls the "joys that never fade".”
It shows Solomon’s Temple, which was an extremely popular subject for sampler makers. Isabella quotes the Old Testament Book of Chronicles in which we learn that King Solomon is building the first temple to God in Jerusalem. It is going to be an immense physical structure which represents the greatness of God.
The sampler has been sent in by Isabella’s grand-daughter, Kay Slater, of Ferryhill Station.
“Isabella married my grandfather, John Walton, who was the manager of West Cornforth Co-op,” says Kay. “She had five children, but died of diabetes before I was born.”
West Cornforth and Cornforth are between Ferryhill and Coxhoe, and we know there used to be a township in that district called East Cornforth. Can anyone tell us about it?
“Hannah was born in Wolsingham in 1824,” says Sarah. “She married John Noble Lacey and they had 12 children. She died in 1917 and is buried in Wolsingham churchyard.
“Billy was a wagon and bus driver - there may still be people alive who remember him driving the local buses. He was also well known for his dancing, winning competitions at the local dances.”
“My grandmother was also Isabella Aird but she wasn’t born until 1868,” says John Glahome in Northallerton. “The Isabella who made it was her aunt, born 1834, and her father was Thomas Aird, which accounts for one of the TAs on the sampler.
“One of the Airds was said to be captain of a coaster sailing the North Sea trade.”
“This is by my maternal grandmother, Ann Elizabeth Ada Palmer, who was born in 1876 so the 1891 sampler was done when she was a teenager,” says Stephen Auster. “She was the youngest of six children born to George and Harriet Palmer of Peachley Grange, Lower Broadheath, near Worcester.”
Ann married George Edward Roland Howard Auster, from nearby Droitwich, whose father, Thomas, had founded a business making spanners and bolts for coach-builders.
But in the early 20th Century, as Ann was marrying into the Austers, they diversified into making the first wind shields for early cars which replaced the goggles used by the first drivers. Auster wind shields wrapped round the driver and some had a flip-up pane near the top.
They were sold with advertising slogans such as: "See the world through an Auster windscreen."
Not for the mid 20th Century sampler maker a Biblical scene or quote. Phyllis’s embroidery commemorates the marriage of Princess Elizabeth and Prince Philip on November 20, 1947, and she includes a quote – “many strange roads we love to roam, but the best is the road that takes us home” – from Patience Strong, a popular poet who for a decade had a daily poem in the Mirror newspaper.
“The border is what is known as a ‘honeysuckle border’,” says Gillian Hunt. “On samplers, the honeysuckle symbolizes enduring faith, generosity and affection.”
Practically every detail has a symbolic meaning on a sampler. For example, Dorothy uses green, which represents faith, immortality, joy and youth, along with red, which represents divine love.
Dorothy’s main image is Solomon’s Temple which, like the sampler, was a representation of the greatness of God.
“Very often on samplers, the stitcher manages well until they must turn the corner on the border and then it doesn’t match up!” says Gillian. “Dorothy’s is quite good, suggesting she was being carefully taught and supervised during its stitching.”
Walton is a common surname in Teesdale, but fortunately Dorothy stitched in the names of her parents, Matthew and Margaret, which gave Gillian just enough genealogical clues to work out that she was baptized at Middleton on December 23, 1820, and her family lived at Town Head, which is the sharply rising road off the town centre going over to Stanhope.
Her father, Matthew, is listed as a miner – presumably a leadminer, as Middleton was the London Lead Company’s headquarters.
On May 15, 1845, Dorothy married John Jackson, of Wolsingham, a woodman, and they lived in Town Head where Dorothy’s first child, a son called Whitfield, was born two years later. At the age of 14, Whitfield had left school and was working as a lead ore dresser and he died when he was only 23.
Dorothy and her husband were living in Hill Top, Eggleston, when the 1861 census was taken, were at Mickleton in Teesdale for the 1871 census, but were back in Middleton, in Horse Market, for the 1881 census.
Dorothy died on October 17, 1883, aged 62. Her John died in 1894, aged 73, and his passing merited a paragraph in the Teesdale Mercury.
“Of a naturally strong constitution,” it said, “it was thought his life would have been prolonged. However, the end came somewhat unexpectedly. He contracted a cold, which brought on inflammation of the lungs, to which he succumbed after a very short illness. He was one of the oldest members of the Primitive Methodist Church and of an unassuming and kindly disposition. The memory of his life and goodness will still live, though his form is missing and his voice is still in death.”
Dorothy, John and their son Whitfield were buried at Middleton, but don’t seem to have a headstone.
They’d lost another son, Matthew, as a baby in 1850, but were survived by their other son, John, who, unexpectedly moved to Heaton in Newcastle where he was listed as an organ-builder – Heaton was home of the firm of organ-builders called Blackett & Howden.
“I assume that as the Jacksons were a family of woodmen, sawers and joiners, he was working on the wooden cases and not the organ pipes,” says Gillian.
John had three children. He gave one of his sons the middle name of Whitfield, and on censuses at the start of the 20th Century, his daughter, Pollie, is listed as a “dressmaker” – so perhaps the stitching skills that Dorothy had exhibited on her sampler in 1832 had been passed onto her granddaughter.
- With many thanks to Gillian Hunt
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