Embroidered sampler

Haverhill, Massachusetts, was the home to a distinctive group of schoolgirl samplers produced under the instruction of several identified teachers. Nine-year-old Caroline Carleton stitched into her inscription that she made this example at Miss Moody’s School. Typical of early nineteenth century Haverhill work, the bottom area of her sampler features a basket of stylized fruit, a pine tree, a fruit tree, and a flowering vine. While the inscription after her name that states she made the sampler in “Haverhill County of Essex” is unique to Miss Moody’s school, the four-sided arcaded strawberry border is commonly found on the town’s earlier schoolgirl needlework.

Caroline was born in nearby Bradford, Massachusetts on December 30, 1810, to Ebenezer “Eben” Carleton (1786-1836) and Mary “Polly” Peabody (1790-1828), both descendants of early English immigrants to Massachusetts. By 1814 the family moved to Haverhill, where Caroline’s three sisters were born. At sixteen she married James Warren Grimes Graham (1805-1858), a shoe cutter, and between 1828 and 1844 they raised eight children. Caroline died in 1845, at the age thirty-four, only a year after the birth of her youngest daughter. This carefully worked sampler serves as a record of her early education and Haverhill’s vibrant schoolgirl embroidery tradition.