[ALPHABET SAMPLER - NEW BEDFORD, MASS. 1787]. ABCDEF [etc.] 1 2 3 4 5 [etc.] Rhoda Haydon Born in November the 4 in the year of our Lord 1777 ABCDEF [etc.]

New Bedford, Bristol County, Mass, 1787. Very good. Hand spun and hand woven linen embroidered with silk thread (278 x 255 mm / 11" x 10"). Excellent state of preservation (small hole inside the letter "o" in Haydon). EARLY AMERICAN EMBROIDERED SAMPLERS DOCUMENT THE EDUCATION AND DEVELOPMENT OF GIRLS, WHO AT THAT TIME HAD FEW OPPORTUNITIES TO ATTEND SCHOOLS.

This is an extremely well preserved 18th-century "Alphabet Sampler" created by a New England girl who is fully documented in historical records: Rhoda Haydon of New Bedford, Mass. As we learn from the present sampler, she was born on Nov. 4, 1777. Her parents were Capt. William and Susanna (truncated) Haydon / Hayden; at the age of 19, on June 19, 1796, Rhoda married Capt. Rowland Robinson Crocker. They had four children, all boys. Rhoda did not live long: she died on Oct. 5, 1808, just before her 31st birthday. We have been unable to locate the cause of her death.

This type of sampler is known as an "alphabet sampler" (because it is composed primarily of alphabets), or a "marking sampler" (because girls learned to embroider letters and numbers for the purpose of marking domestic and personal linens to show ownership).

Our sampler is UNSOPHISTICATED and is of museum quality. The linen was likely hand spun and hand woven (which is not common) and the colors may have come from vegetable dyes. The most unusual feature of the sampler is the quantity of numbers: most girls recorded numbers 1 - 9 (and sometimes also a zero). Rhoda Haydon was very ambitious, recording numbers 1 - 29. From the first alphabet (lines one and two) she omitted the letters "J" and "U" which she then added to the line below, no doubt following an 18th-century exemplar in which letter J, U. Note that her second alphabet is missing the letter U, but her last one has the U (but not J).

According to Lynne Anderson, the stitching of our sampler is likely to have been cross-stitching, long arm cross, eyelet, Algerian eye, and hem, all executed in order to demonstrate the skill of the embroiderer.

FULLY DOCUMENTED 18TH-CENTURY ALPHABET SAMPLERS IN SUCH GOOD CONDITION ARE VERY UNCOMMON.

Cataloguer's note: We are grateful to Lynne Anderson of the Sampler Consortium for the extensive information she kindly supplied about the present Sampler. (Inventory #: 4194)