In the fall of 2012 the Sampler Archive Project launched the Delaware Schoolgirl Sampler Initiative, a search for schoolgirl needlework samplers in Delaware’s public and private collections. With funding from the Delaware Humanities Forum and the Sampler Consortium, the project conducted seven Sampler Identification and Documentation Days (Sampler ID Days), held at Delaware museums and historical societies across all three of the state’s counties, five in 2013 and two in 2014. One additional Sampler ID Day was held in 2015 and another in 2016, both funded by private resources.
These efforts resulted in locating, photographing, and documenting more than 330 samplers, most of them American. Approximately 25% of the documented samplers are owned by Delaware museums and historical societies, with 75% owned by descendants of the sampler makers or private sampler collectors.
In the spring of 2014, with generous funding from the Coby Foundation, the Sampler Consortium collaborated with the Biggs Museum of American Art in Dover to host a six-week exhibition of Delaware samplers titled Wrought with Careful Hand: Ties of Kinship on Delaware Samplers (March 7 – April 21, 2014), as well as a three-day sampler symposium March 21-23, 2014. Funding from the Coby Foundation also supported publication of a 96-page, full color exhibition catalog co-authored by Drs. Lynne Anderson and Gloria Seaman Allen, with a forward by Dr. Susan Schoelwer and research assistance from a host of other Sampler Consortium members.
Investigation into Delaware samplers by Gloria Seaman Allen and her research team continued, leading to a second sampler exhibition at the Biggs Museum of American Art in 2018 titled “Delaware Discoveries: Girlhood Embroidery, 1750-1850” (May 19 – July 22, 2018). The exhibition featured approximately 125 schoolgirl embroideries stitched by girls living in Delaware’s three counties: New Castle, Kent, and Sussex. On June 9, 2018 the Biggs Museum hosted a second sampler symposium featuring scholarship on Delaware samplers by members of the Sampler Consortium as speakers: Linda Eaton, Cindy Steinhoff, Lynne Anderson, Susi Slocum, Mary Brooks, and Sheryl DeJong. In 2019 a 350-page book authored by Dr. Gloria Seaman Allen and Cynthia Steinhoff titled “Delaware Discoveries: Girlhood Embroidery, 1750-1850” was published by the Chesapeake Book Company.
All American samplers located, photographed, and documented during the Delaware Sampler Initiative have been included in the Sampler Archive’s national online database of American samplers
