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Fig. 32.—Small Sampler by Martha Haynes.
Dated 1704.
Late in the Author’s Collection.

From 1750 onwards the majority of samplers are endorsed with the age of the child, and the main interest in the endorsements lies in the remarkable proficiency which many of them exhibit, considering the youth of the worker, and in the tender age at which they were wrought. Almost one half of the tiny workers have not reached the space when their years are marked with two figures, and we even have one mite of six producing the piece of needlework reproduced in [Fig. 33], and talking of herself as in her prime in the verse set out upon it.

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Fig. 33.—Sampler by Sarah Pelham, aged 6.

But perhaps the most remarkable achievement is the “goldfinch” sampler illustrated in [Plate XII.], which was worked by Ann Maria Wiggins at the age of seven.

It is not unreasonable to suppose that samplers were on occasions worked by children of both sexes. One’s own recollection carries back to canvas and Berlin wool-work having been one way of passing the tedious hours of a wet day. But specimens where the Christian name of a male appears are few and far between, and more often than not they are worked in conjunction with others, which would seem to indicate that they are only there as part and parcel of a list (which is not unusual) of the family. In the sampler illustrated in [Fig. 34] the boy’s name, Robert Henderson, is in black silk, differing from any of the rest of the lettering, which is perhaps testimony to his having produced it. This sampler shows the perpetuation until 1762 of the form in which rows are the predominant feature. A sampler, formerly in the author’s collection, was more clearly that of a boy, being signed Lindsay Duncan, Cuper [sic], 1788. Another Scottish one bears the name or names Alex. Peter Isobel Dunbar, whilst a third of the same kind is signed “Mathew was born on April 16, 1764, and sewed this in August, 1774.”