Mourning Sampler, 1841. 70.23.1
Mourning sampler, polychrome silk on linen. The sampler features a floral border of vines and flowers. Near the top portion is the alphabet, the numbers one through ten, and the date July 8, 1841. Below this, inside a border of flowers is the following poem:
So fades the lovely blooming flower
Sweet smiling solace of an hour
So soon our transient comforts fly
And Pleasures only bloom to die
Under the poem is a memorial stone with an urn on top. The memorial reads: In memory of Nelson Stark who died June 3rd 1840 in the 5th year of his life.
Other imagery includes two evergreen trees, two women talking and holding bouquets, a weeping willow tree, a house, urns of flowers, a single cut flower, a Greek column, and a goldfinch. At the bottom are the words: Wrought by Fanny E. Stark when ten years of age. R.A. Hall teacher.
Fanny Elizabeth Stark was born on February 6, 1831, to Lathrop Stark and Fanny Saxton in Bozrah, Connecticut, a small town outside of Norwich. She was the oldest of the six children in their farming family. In June of 1836 the Starks had their third child, Nelson Hicks Stark. Nelson died just 4 days shy of his fifth birthday, or as Fanny’s sampler states “in his 5th year of life” on June 3, 1840. The following year when Fanny was ten years old, she sewed this mourning sampler in memory of her little brother. She created it under the tutelage of her teacher R. A. Hall. It’s possible this could be her relative Rebecca Ann Stark Hall, but this could not be conclusively verified. In 1842, the Starks gave birth to their youngest son naming him Everett Nelson Stark, possibly in memory of their older son which was a common practice at the time. Fanny married Simeon Abel in 1851, (her sister Mary married Simeon’s brother Elijah). She lived in Bozrah for the rest of her life passing away in 1895 at the age of sixty-four.
Nelson Stark is buried beside his parents in the Stark family cemetery. The probate records of Lathrop Stark, who died in 1877, detail the work done on the cemetery including a headstone for Nelson and himself for $43.34, two days of drawing stone for $5.50 and using that stone to stack and build up the cemetery wall for $44.00. 1 That stone wall still surrounds the small rural cemetery. Fanny’s embroidery is a testament to the high child mortality rates in the 19th century. Of the sixteen marked graves in Stark Cemetery six are children under the age of five.
During the 18th and 19th centuries needlework skills were considered a necessary and important part of a young girl’s education. “Samplers, canvaswork pieces, and lush silk embroideries were evidence of the young women’s accomplishments and social status.”2 A young girl might attend boarding school, a public day school, or learn under the tutelage of a family member. On a more practical note, samplers often reinforced literacy in the form of letters, numbers, and poems. Christian imagery was often used encompassing a religious education. “Samplers often included lofty verses as well as alphabets, which at least implied reading abilities and cultural aspirations, even piety.”3
Samplers often fit into certain genres. The GCV&M has many of these types of girlhood embroidery in their collections. Mourning samplers are a common type of embroidery as young girls struggled with grief and wanted a way to honor and remember their loved ones. Alphabet samplers were often the first to be taught. Family registries with birth and death dates and family trees helped girls remember their ancestors and important dates in their family. Country scenes with houses, people, and many types of animals were often accompanied by sweet poems or bible verses. Some samplers contained only floral and botanical motifs with names, poems, or verses added. Samplers could be simple with just letters and numbers or could be incredibly detailed like a work of art. They almost always had the name of the maker and the date and often had the name of the teacher.
The imagery used in samplers often had symbolic meanings. There are many of these symbols in Fanny’s work. The most noticeable is the large memorial in the middle fashioned after a stone monument with a Greek urn on top. To the left of it is a Greek column. “Memorials will often contain monuments marking the graves of loved ones shaped like Greek urns or vases and reveal the maker’s knowledge and sophisticated appreciation for the past.”4 Two girls or women stand next to the monument holding flowers as if they are going to place them on a grave. The weeping willow is a common symbol for mourning and sorrow as the shape of their limbs and leaves remind one of tears falling and the trees are often planted in cemeteries. The two evergreen trees represent eternal life as they are green year-round. The single cut flower on the left-hand side by the Greek column represents a life cut short.5 The vases of roses represent love, and the Gold Finch embodies the Christian soul.6 The poem in the middle which shows the young girl’s sorrow is based on a hymn written in 1760 by Anne Steele.7
Girlhood samplers are not only beautiful but offer a window into the makers life. “Every sampler is a historical record of one girl’s educational training and the type and value placed on that education. The overall design, materials used, and design motifs give evidence of her culture, religion, social class, and personal artistic accomplishments and abilities.”8
- www.ancestry,com ↩︎
- Florence Griswold Museum, “Stitching It Together,” Florence Griswold Museum, March 24, 2022, https://florencegriswoldmuseum.org/visit/families/stitching-it-together/. ↩︎
- Centre County Historical Society, “Unraveling the Threads of History,” Centre County Historical Society, August 23, 2021, https://centrehistory.org/unraveling-the-threads-of-history/. ↩︎
- Florence Griswold Museum, “Stitching It Together,” Florence Griswold Museum, March 24, 2022, https://florencegriswoldmuseum.org/visit/families/stitching-it-together/. ↩︎
- Ibid ↩︎
- “Sampler Motifs,” Hands Across The Sea Samplers, December 18, 2015, https://hands-across-the-sea-samplers.com/symbolism-sampler-motifs/. ↩︎
- Anne Steele, “So Fades the Blooming Flower,” Hymnary.org, accessed March 2, 2024, https://hymnary.org/text/so_fades_the_lovely_blooming_flower. ↩︎
- Valerie J. Davis, “The ABCs of Schoolgirl Samplers: Girls’ Education and Needlework from a Bygone Era,” Milwaukee Public Museum, 2022, https://www.mpm.edu/research-collections/history/online-collections-research/schoolgirl-samplers. ↩︎