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Three Needlework Samplers: Martha Platt (1815-1887), Mary Ann Goodrich (1806-1828), Louisa Bradley (1802-1830?)
Description
- silk and linen
Provenance
Mary Ann Goodrich- Estelle Horowitz, September, 1985
Condition
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.
Catalogue Note
Louisa Bradley's simple marking sampler-a modest exercise in alphabet embroidery-is dedicated to her mother's sister, Phebe, who is beseeched to "accept this trifle." By these words, Louisa's early embroidered endeavor has become a presentation piece, a rather uncommon but delightful custom.1 Louisa may have received her embroidery instruction as a day student at Sally Pierce's Academy in Litchfield. This impressive school for girls began in the dining room of Pierce's house in 1792. By 1803, Pierce was conducting classes in a new building, teaching as many as 130 young ladies during the span of a year. "The fine accomplishments of music, dancing, singing and embroidery, of drawing and painting" were retained when the move was made from the smaller school, while classes in chemistry, astronomy, and botany supplemented history and geography.2 Louisa Bradley was born on July 29, 1802, to Lucy Stoddard and Joseph Bradley. She married Leonard Kenney in 1819 and is believed to have died on July 28, 1880.3
1. George C. Woodruff, A Genealogical Register of the Inhabitants of the Town of Litchfield, Connecticut (Hartford, CT: Hartford Press, 1900),20,208,209.
2. Alain C. White, The History of the Town of Litchfield, Connecticut, 1720-1920 (Litchfield, CT: Litchfield Historical Society, 1920), 111-114. The influence of Sarah Pierce and her academy may be examined more thoroughly in two books by Emily Noyes Vanderpoel, Chronicles of a Pioneer Schoolfrom 1792 to 1833 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1903) and More Chronicles of a Pioneer School (New York, NY, 1927).
3. Woodruff, Genealogical Register, 20. See also Family Record Archives, Family History Library of the Church of jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake City, UT. The date of Louisa's death was presented to the library undocumented by published information.
By 1816, Wethersfield, one of the earliest settlements in Connecticut, was a thriving, prosperous town along a triangular stretch of the Connecticut River. A yellow-painted meeting house graced the town with a fine, high steeple, and pleasant houses, with carefully tended gardens, lined each thoroughfare. The young girls of the neighborhood were instructed in the art of embroidery by an unidentified schoolmistress of exceptional ability. Her school was probably near the juncture of Sandy Lane and High Street, for a landownership map of the town, c. 1850, inscribed with surnames of the samplermakers indicates that many of them lived in this area.1 Several similar pictorial samplers, dating from between 1804 and 1827, help to document that the school existed for at least twenty-three years.2 The sampler stitched by Mary Ann Goodrich is typical of this group, for it has been worked in the same format. A swag of flowers, draped like a lambrequin, spreads across the top of the linen and is characteristically caught in the center by a ribboned bow. Almost without exception, related embroideries depict similar buildings in a picturesque setting, often giving prominence to a wide rift of the Connecticut River, so vital to the town. The foreground of Mary Ann's splendid embroidery pictures fishermen in their miniature boats afloat on the silken water, while in the distance the spired meeting house and the town take shape. A white silk house, with green-tinted windows and a roof worked in satin stitches the color of tarnished copper, is prominently displayed. As with at least half a dozen other family registers, a popular form of sampler embroidery in this Connecticut school between 1816 and 1821, Mary's sampler is lavishly adorned with the familiar garland of blossoms, leaves, and bowknots. 3 Samplers from this region fall into two distinct categories. The earlier pieces are embellished with a thin, narrow loop of flowers, caught by a bouquet at center top, with no discernible ribbon or bow. Those of a later period, such as that worked by Mary Ann, reveal a more extravagant design. Probably influenced by the delicately -elegant silk embroideries worked in nearby Hartford at the Misses Pattens' painting and embroidery school-which may be recognized by their heavy, gold-corded eagle, sequined bows, and lavishly draped blossoms-the full flowered, ribbon-tied garland made its appearance in Wethersfield, along with the characteristic townscapes that lend such captivating charm to the needlework.4 Such an abrupt change in format and composition is usually indicative of a change in instruction. In this instance, it would suggest that a different schoolmistress, perhaps in the same school, added a flair of her own to an already established regional needlework pattern. Because the surviving samplers are so similar to those attributed to the well-attended Patten school, where over four thousand students were educated over a span of forty years,5 it is reasonable to assume that Mary Ann's schoolmistress received her education there. While the linen samplers lack the excessive decoration of the silk embroideries, there is unquestionably a relationship between these two schools of embroidery. Mary Ann's genealogical sampler was additionally inscribed by at least two needleworkers. One was probably Mary Stoddard Goodrich, her mother, who on three separate occasions embroidered in the black silk threads of mourning the dates of death for Mary Ann; her husband, William; and her only son, William Wells Goodrich. The later inscriptions, handwritten in ink on slips of paper, were inserted following the established pattern sometime after 1856, when Mary Stoddard Goodrich died at the age of eighty. As inscribed on the sampler, Mary Ann Goodrich died on March 17, 1828, at the age of twenty-two.
1. Peter Benes, Two Towns, Concord and Wethersfield: a Comparative Exhibition of Regional Culture 1635-1850, vol. 1 (Concord, MA: Concord Antiquarian Museum, 1982),6,7,128.
2. The sampler worked by Hope Mosely (private collection; see ibid., 90) is dated 1804, and the mourning sampler worked by Sarah Roberts Weeks (private collection; see ibid., 162) bears an 1827 date. Weeks, who married in 1829, has inscribed one part of the monument on her embroidery with the date of birth and death of her son, Charles Weeks Wiers, obviously a later addition.
3. Benes, Two Towns, 90, 91, 92, 153.
4. Ring, American Needlework Treasures, 80, 81. See also Suzanne L. Flynt, Ornamental and Useful Accomplishments: Schoolgirl Education and Deerfield Academy 1800-1830 (Deerfield, MA: Memorial Hall Museum, 1988), 18, 19, 24. Suzanne Flynt theorizes that Deerfield Academy instructress Jerusha Williams, who attended the Patten school in Hartford as a young woman, taught her students the identical eagle and garland motifs, using the same corded-gilt threads and sequins so closely identified with the Patten school. It seems unreasonable to suggest that Williams would not have changed the patterns slightly or added some of her own creativity, given the opportunity (pp.17, 22). Ruth, Sarah, and Mary Patten kept a school in Hartford from 1785 until 1825.The elegant silk embroideries attributed to their instruction are today highly prized by collectors of antique needlework.
5. Elisabeth Donaghy Garrett, "American Samplers and Needlework Pictures in the DAR Museum, Part 1: 1739-1806," Antiques (February 1974): 82.
The residents of Milford, Connecticut, which is situated on the Wepawaug River, along Long Island Sound, showed little concern for public education during the first few decades of the nineteenth century, depending instead on schooling by private means for those who could afford to pay. l An attempt was made in 1824 to hire Betsey Fowler of Ship Yard Lane at "8 1/2 [dollars?]" a month (it is not known whether she accepted the offer). In 1836, schoolmistress Alma L. Williams billed Mr. Ford 14 1/2 cents a week to educate his daughter, Elizabeth. The amount for an eight-week term was $1.16.2 While it is known that private schools for girls were available in Milford, many parents sent their daughters to be educated in more fashionable New Haven boarding schools. The long history of schooling in New Haven begins in 1651, with the dame school kept by Goodwife Wickham.3 Martha Platt may have studied needlework and ornamental embroidery in New Haven, for her sampler bears a certain similarity to a sampler worked by Lydia Church in 1791, at Mary Mansfield's New Haven school. Mansfield, who taught at least from 1791 to 1793, may have been responsible for the initial sampler design, which was then continued by another teacher.4 Martha's unbordered sampler displays a modest, and for the period straightforward, version of the central portion of that stitched by Lydia Church, which is lavishly embellished with a wide, solidly embroidered black border. Like Lydia, however, Martha has worked similarly branched trees, a house with two of the windows divided into twelve panes, a pedimented door pierced by two glazed inserts, a garden of flowers, and sprightly costumed figures.5 Although verging on the ordinary, Martha's sampler has been adorned with two of the most enchanting figures in American sampler embroidery. Each figure, meticulously endowed with human hair, holds a tiny nosegay of flowers. The figure to the left wears a fashionable blue, tent-stitched dress, scrupulously trimmed with pale ivory silk, while the figure at the right wears a dress with a soft blue bodice and a biscuit-colored skirt, worked entirely in horizontal bands of buttonhole stitches. This unusual method of depicting a particular style of fashion-with thread, needle, and a minimum number of stitches-is technically extremely difficult. But Martha Platt succeeded in achieving graceful, properly proportioned figures and, most important, has created the effect of finely pleated, or gathered, tiers of fabric in one of the costumes. The very smallest of neatly worked slippers may be detected at the hemline of each dress. Fancy needlework of the first and second quarters of the nineteenth century sometimes lacks a certain sophistication when compared to the fine examples taught by earlier, more demanding schoolmistresses. The rage for ornamental embroidery in schools for girls was diminishing by the middle of the century, to be supplanted by special classes in painting, drawing, and music. Thus an acceptance of greater simplicity in needlework may explain the missing border on Martha Platt's sampler, though her delightful sampler figures remain unsurpassed. Born in Milford on October 28, 1815, to Nathan Platt and Sarah Fowler, Martha was the youngest of four children. Her family was among the first to settle in New Haven in the first half of the seventeenth century.6 The house in which Martha lived still remains on old East Town Street. Built in 1823, it was occupied by members of the Platt family for over 150 years.7 Sometime before 1841; Martha Platt married De Luzerne Hubbell. They lived in a large white house on Clark Street in Milford. They had no children. Martha Platt Hubbell died April 26, 1887, and is buried in the Milford Center Cemetery.8
1. History of Milford, Connecticut, 1639-1939 (State of Connecticut, Federal Writers' Project, 1939),81.
2. History of Milford, 82. Federal Census, Milford, Connecticut, 1830, lists Betsey Fowler as a teacher.
3. Woody, History of Women's Education, vol. 1: 138.
4. Krueger, New England Samplers, 20,145.
5. The Church sampler is in the collection of the Connecticut Historical Society, Hartford; see Bolton and Coe, American Samplers, opp. 324.
6. Susan Woodruff Abbot, comp., Families of Early Milford, Connecticut, ed. Jacquelyn L. Ricker (Baltimore, MD: Genealogical Publishing Co, Inc., 1979), 565. See also Charles Platt, J r., Platt Genealogy in America-From the Arrival of Richard Platt in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1638 (New Hope, PA, 1963), 98. See also Nathan Stowe, Sixty Years' Recollections of Milford, ed. Newton Harrison (rev. ed., Milford, CT, 1917), map between 92, 93. Baptismal Records, Milford, Connecticut, vol. 1 (First United Church of Christ, Milford, CT), 125. I am indebted to Richard Platt, Jr., and Caroline Platt Walsh, who corresponded with me from May through August 1982. Mr. Platt identified the location of Martha Platt's home and has shared many family remembrances. I appreciate his kind assistance.
7. Correspondence with Richard Platt, July 22, 1982.
8. Platt, Platt Genealogy, 98. See also Connecticut Church Records, vol. 2 (Connecticut State Library, Hartford), 37, 38. Martha Hubbell was admitted to the church in 1841; Platt letter of April 21, 1982. I have visited the cemetery in Milford to document the date of her death.