samplers
Detective work: that is the process used by savvy historians Dan and Marty Campanelli to trace the young girls that embroidered each sampler in their recently published book, “A Sampling of Hunterdon County Needlework: The Motifs, the Makers & Their Stories” (Hunterdon County Historical Society).
Girls were taught the skills of stitching and also learned alphabets and words through their needlework. They would sign and date their samplers by stitching their names, often cleverly placed amongst the architectural elements, hymn verses, lacy landscapes, flourishes of flowers, prancing animals and poems.
Now is the time for me to do my own detective work and search the local historical societies for samplers yielding the names of the women and their daughters that lived here– Taphenes Cande, Abigail Andrews, Lucretia E. Tuller, Mary A. Tuller, Sarah L Gordon, Elizabeth M. Noxon & Eleanora T. Hayes.