Rare Needlework Sampler, Mehitable Foster (1771-1803), Canterbury, New Hampshire, Dated 1786

Worked in silk, twisted silk threads and silk floss on linen in tent, satin, long and short, outline, eyelet, chain, herringbone, bullion and cross-stitches. Inscribed: Mehitable Fosters sampler wrought/in the Fifteenth year of her age/A.D. 1786 Schoolmistress: probably Hannah Wise Rogers. Some discoloration and fading. 17 1/2  by 14 1/2  inches. (22 threads to the inch).

See catalogue note at sothebys.com

David Deutsch, New York, October, 1981

Somewhat darkened and with some fading.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

Exhibited and Literature: LACMA, pp. 40-42, fig. 8

Samplers worked in Merrimack County, New Hampshire, around the adjoining villages of Canterbury, Sanbornton, and Northfield, have long been appreciated by collectors for their skillfully worked, instantly recognizable format. Exclusive to this rural settlement, this embroidery design was conceived by an imaginative schoolmistress who favored a bordering frame of exquisitely patterned vases-resembling Chinese porcelain overflowing with distinctive, double-plumed foliage and brightly colored flowers. Paired birds pose beside an elegantly adorned urn, displaying the characteristically scalloped, heavily veined leaves. The sampler worked by Mehitable Foster in 1786 represents the earliest example of this remarkable and important group. First appearing in the last decades of the eighteenth century, this distinguished pattern endured for at least forty-four years, until Mary K. Osgood ¹ worked her sampler in 1830, when schoolgirl embroideries were on the wane. At least seventeen stylistically related samplers make up this group.  This schoolmistress required her meticulously embroidered decorative motifs to be embellished with an outline of black silk threads. The clever device serves to enliven the subtle tones of the sampler palette, as well as to accentuate the various and interesting shapes within the design. The princely birds on this sampler have been adorned with crowns of silver metallic thread.  As with many of the surviving samplers from this group, a pale blue sawtooth border surrounds the interior rectangle of alphabets, a reversing strawberry band, the signature, and the date.  The tall trees, extending from the pictorial garden upward into the border, are distinctive in shape and each have six horizontal branches. These cross-stitched trees were sometimes replaced with a more formal style, tapering and stately with upreaching points. In 1806, however, Anna Lyford² worked two airy, feathery trees on her unfinished sampler, suggesting that variations may have occurred under the supervision of another teacher.  HANNAH WISE ROGERS Who was the long sought-after schoolmistress of eighteenth-century Canterbury? Who originated this exquisite needlework pattern that spread throughout the county? The answer may lie in the colonial village of Ipswich, Massachusetts, in the person of Hannah Wise Rogers.  Hannah Wise was born in Ipswich, Essex County, Massachusetts, in 1719, the daughter of Ammi Ruhami Wise. She married Samuel Rogers, an Ipswich physician. A great deal has  been written about this Massachusetts family, which included  Samuel Rogers's father, John, once president of Harvard College.³  Samplers depicting embroidery patterns similar to those from  Canterbury are known to have been favored by schoolmistresses  teaching in Essex County and in the villages along the shoreline  north of Boston. For example, the vase worked on the Boxford sampler (fig. 14) is suggestive of Canterbury, as is the vase and vine border of Mary Canney's 1774 sampler (fig. 7). It is possible, then, to assume that these young Canterbury women attended embroidery classes taught by Hannah Rogers, for she is known to have kept a school for girls in Ipswich from 1774 to 1784. In a history of the town, the Reverend Augustine Caldwell is quoted, sometime around 1784, as saying, "Madam Rogers kept a school for young ladies that was in great repute."⁴ By the time Mehitable Foster worked this sampler, however, Hannah Rogers was no longer teaching in Ipswich. This presented a dilemma until genealogical studies revealed that the schoolmistress and samplermaker were related by marriage.  Along with her cousins, Polly (or Mary) Foster, whose sampler is dated 1787, ⁵ and Hannah Foster, who worked an identical sampler in 1796,⁶ Mehitable lived in a village originally known as  Hackleborough. The town historian described it as "a Foster settlement, a Foster neighborhood." ⁷ Hannah Rogers was a great aunt to Mehitable and grandmother to cousins Polly and Hannah.  By following the thread of Hannah Rogers's life we can piece together a wealth of circumstantial evidence that substantiates this theory. When Samuel Rogers died in 1772, Hannah was obliged to sell half of her home to cover her husband's debts. In 1774, she began teaching the girls of Ipswich in her diminished living quarters. It is unlikely that she kept a boarding school.  In October 1784, Hannah was forced to sell what remained of her home. At this time, she may have moved to Canterbury to be near her daughters (Mehitable's aunts), for the census records for  1790 seem to confirm that Hannah became a member of the  household of Abiel and Mary Foster.  The samplers made by Mehitable Foster in 1786, her cousin Polly Foster in 1787, and Appha Woodman in 1787⁸ suggest that a  school for girls had been started in Canterbury, but subtle changes in the stylistic patterns of Canterbury samplers imply that Hannah died around 1799.⁹ There is a refinement and delicacy to the early pieces that is lacking in those worked after 1800. It is not difficult to detect the minor changes that occurred in this elegant embroidery pattern. Most of the eighteenth-century pieces give prominence to a wide strawberry band within an enclosed rectangle of alphabet forms, while many of the nineteenth- century ones do not (although in 1826, Harriet Peverly worked such a reversing band on her embroidery¹⁰. Tree shapes on the later samplers vary, and many examples are borderless. We can only surmise that Hannah Rogers's original pattern became the forerunner of a sampler design that remained in vogue in the region until at least 1833, when Apphia Amanda Young finished hers.¹¹ Evidence recently unearthed reveals that both Lucy Rogers Foster (daughter to Hannah Rogers) and her daughter, samplermaker Polly Foster, became schoolmistresses in the district, or common, schools, as did numerous Foster women. But there is no record of embroidery worked under their supervision.¹² Needlework, it appears, was primarily the domain of the private schoolmistress, as taxpayers were suitably cautious of their expenditures. MEHITABLE FOSTER Mehitable Foster, the daughter of Asa Foster and Hannah Symons, was born on November 19, 1771. She married Benjamin Kimball, a hatter, in March of 1798. They lived in Concord, New Hampshire, in an impressive five-bay frame mansion that remains there today. Mehitable Foster Kimball died on September 23, 1803, after the birth of four sons in five years of marriage. She was only thirty-two.¹³    

 

1. The Osgood sampler is in a private collection; see The Encyclopedia of Collectibles (Alexandria, VA: Time-Life Books, 1980), R-S, opp. 88.  

2. The Lyford sampler is in the collection of the Museum of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Washington, D.C.; see Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett, The Arts of Independence (Washington, D.C.: The National Society, Daughters of the American Revolution, 1985),80.  

3. Joseph B. Felt, A History of Ipswich, Essex, and Hamilton (Cambridge, MA: Charles Folsom, 1834), 234, 235, 236. See also Vital Records of Ipswich, Massachusetts, to the End of the Year 1849, vol. 3 (Salem, MA: Essex Institute, 1919) and Records of the First Congregational Church of Ipswich. This information was documented for me by the librarians of the Public Library of Ipswich, to whom I am indebted. F or more information on the status of the Rogerses of Ipswich, see Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Good Wives, Image, and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England: 1650-1750 (New York, NY: Alfred A. Knopf, 1982), 57, 58. 

 4. Franklin Waters Thomas, Ipswich in the Massachusetts Bay Colony, vol. 2 (Ipswich, t-.lA: Ipswich Historical Society, 1905),454.  

5. Polly Foster's sampler is in the collection of the New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord; see Krueger, New England Samplers, fig. 59.  

6. Hannah Foster's sampler is in the collection of the New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord; see Krueger, New England Samplers, fig. 60.  

7. James Otis Lyford, History of the Town ofCanterbury, New Hampshire: 1727-1912 (Concord, NH: Rumford Press, 1912), vols. 1: 430, 431 and 2: 134, 135.  

8. The location of the Woodman sampler is unknown; see Krueger, New England Samplers, fig. 61, and Bolton and Coe, American Samplers, opp. 364.  

9. Vital Records of Ipswich, vol. 2: 662. See also Deed Book, Essex County, vol. 135: 262, 263. According to this document, dated May 24, 1775, Hannah's share of the house measured "from the center of the kitchen and through the center of the chimney of the fore doors to a stake on the road." See also Deed Book, Essex County, vol. 145: 50, 51. Federal Census, Canterbury, New.' Hampshire, 1790, lists six females living in Abiel Foster's household. Mary and Abiel had only three daughters-two were Mary's stepdaughters and one her own-leaving two women unaccounted for. An early map of the district indicates that the Foster brothers lived within walking distance of one another. See also Lyford, History of Canterbury, vol. 1: 425--439; map, 433. 

10. The Peverly sampler is in a private collection; see Krueger, New.' England Samplers, fig. 62.  

11. The Young sampler is in a private collection; see Lessons Stitched in Silk: Samplers from Canterbury Region of New.' Hampshire, catalogue (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College Hood Museum of Art, 1990), 10. This recent exhibition allowed for comparison of thirty-three related samplers.  

12. Theodore Foulk, "The Mustache Mystery: a Canterbury Tale," Maine Antiques Digest (April 1990): lB.  

13. Lyford, His/my of Canterbury, vol. 2: 134. See also Grace P. Amsden, A Capitol for New.' Hampshire (unpublished; New Hampshire Historical Society, Concord), 12, 13.