Sampler

This unfinished sampler worked by ten-year-old Evelina Hull in 1806 is the earlier of two embroideries by her in The Met’s collection. The six-year difference between the two pieces provides an interesting comparison of her needlework and design skills. The later embroidered picture from 1812 (39.126.1) is a sophisticated work by a young lady of sixteen. This much simpler earlier sampler has a single alphabet in three bands at the top. Below the alphabet is a moral verse, likely drawn from several different sources, as it does not appear in copybooks, handwriting manuals, or hymnals that were common sources for sampler verses. The lower section of the sampler is incomplete, with only the beginnings of a floral bouquet design. Nevertheless, Evelina inscribed her name and age at the bottom, affirming her authorship. The sampler has three borders: an small inner diamond border, then a meandering vine with large flowers surrounding the alphabet and verse on three sides, and finally a sawtooth outer border that finishes the edge of the sampler on all four sides.


Evelina’s later embroidery, dated 1812, demonstrates her artistic and technical development while attending Miss Hannah Spofford’s Charlestown Academy in Charlestown, Massachusetts. The finely stitched needlework picture features a scene inspired by The Shepherdess of the Alps (1766), a popular play by the well-known French playwright and historian Jean-François Marmontel. Together, the two embroideries illustrate a remarkable improvement in Evelina’s needlework skills, her increased perseverance, and the influence of supervision by a trained teacher.




Born in Charlestown, Massachusetts, on April 9, 1796, Evelina Hull was the daughter of Isaac Hull (b. 1775) and Jerusha Billings Hull (b. 1776). At the age of twenty-four she married Jonathan Frost (1788-1873) on January 31, 1821. It was his second marriage and together they oversaw a prosperous farm in Arlington (originally West Cambridge) where their eight children-- four girls and four boys--were born between 1823 and 1837. Evelina died at age 61 on May 31, 1857, and was interred at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Arlington, Massachusetts, alongside her husband and two of their adult children and spouses. Evelina’s embroideries descended in her family, and her granddaughter, Mrs. Joshua Marsden Van Cott, donated them to the museum in 1939.