Sampler

This unfinished sampler worked by ten-year-old Evelina Hull in 1806 is the earlier of two samplers by her in The Met’s collection. The six-year difference between the two samplers provides an interesting comparison of needlework skills and design. At the top of her first sampler, Evelina stitched a single alphabet in three bands. Below is a moral verse, likely drawn from various 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 remains incomplete, with only the beginning of a floral bouquet executed. Nevertheless, Evelina inscribed her name and age at the bottom, affirming her authorship. The sampler has three borders: an inner border of squares on point, a meandering vine with large flowers surrounds the alphabet and verse on three sides, and a sawtooth outer border finishes the edge of the sampler on all four sides.

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 on May 31, 1857, and was interred at the Mount Pleasant Cemetery in Arlington alongside her husband and two of their adult children and spouses. Both of Evelina’s samplers descended in the Frost family and her granddaughter, Mrs. Joshua Marsden Van Cott, donated them to the Metropolitan Museum in 1939.