SAMPLER

Girlhood education in the South evolved into a serious and expensive business by the turn of the nineteenth century.  Teachers advertised that the educational experience would include strict attention to the moral and genteel development of their students. This emphasis on virtues and refinement is reflected in schoolgirl samplers both in the increased use of moralistic and religious verse and in the appearance of stitched versions of status objects such as houses whose forms boast identifiable architectural details, fences, gates, and gardens.

MESDA is fortunate to own this sampler by Elizabeth Gould as well as a nearly identical work by her sister Ann Gould (1798–1872), 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.