SAMPLER

By the nineteenth century girlhood education in the South had evolved beyond a simple curriculum of basic reading and needlework skills.  Masters were hired to teach dancing and writing a fair hand as well as give lessons in academic subjects such as arithmetic, history, French, and English grammar.  The increasing sophistication of girlhood education is evidenced by the increasingly sophisticated needlework the students produced. 

MESDA is fortunate to own this sampler by Ann Gould as well as a nearly identical work by her sister Elizabeth Gould (b. 1793), from Queen Anne County, on Maryland’s Eastern Shore who in 1807 completed almost identical samplers that reflect the pursuit of virtue and refinement.  Both embroideries feature verses from Proverbs 31 (beginning at verse ten with the rhetorical question, “Who can find a virtuous woman?”), a one-and-a-half-story, three-bay house with a modified Dutch gable roof line flanked by trees, a fence and gate, and compartmented floral borders.