Sampler

Sophia Dyer’s sampler is among the most elaborate of a group of genealogical samplers produced in Portland, Maine, between 1803 and the 1820s. Following a prescribed format, her sampler combines genealogical information with mourning elements, and serves as a family history covering almost one hundred years. Within an exuberant border of blooming roses are the names of her parents and siblings with their birth dates, as well as the death dates of seven family members. The decorative elements include a miniature landscape next to her parent’s names at top, a neighborhood with a church and houses on the lower left, and a memorial monument under a willow tree at the bottom right.

The largest house depicted in the sampler is a five-bay Federal mansion with double chimneys and balustrade similar to the extant Portland home built by Nathaniel Dyer, a shipwright, in 1803 on the corner of York and State Streets. Sophia, whose family lived in Cape Elizabeth, may have boarded at that house or another of the nearby extended Dyer family homes, when she attended school in Portland. The depiction of a newly built Federal house in a sampler was a favorite motif of young girls at a time when home defined the circumstances of a woman’s life.

The popularity of American genealogy samplers flourished following the American Revolutionary War when the nuclear family became the center of emotional and economic support. For social historians today, data collected from genealogical samplers of the early nineteenth century is valuable in recording the frequency of the birth of children, mortality rates, family size, and patterns of naming family members at that time, in addition to serving as a primary source to document an American family.

When Sophia stitched this sampler, Portland had become an active seaport, which resulted in the city experiencing economic growth, increased population, and the proliferation of some twenty schools for both boarding and day students. Sophia inscribed her name and “Portland” in the reserve at the top of her sampler, but no teacher’s name is listed. Although the queen-stitched rose-vine border of Sophia’s sampler is similar to that on genealogy samplers naming two schools, one run by a Miss Mayo and the other by Elizabeth Hussey, a specific school attribution for Sophia’s sampler requires further research.

As documented in her sampler, Sophia was born on November 10, 1805, the youngest of Caleb Dyer (1758-ca. 1832) and Mary Randall Dyer’s (ca. 1755-1820) thirteen children. The stitching of a genealogy sampler often fell to the youngest daughter or oldest daughter in a family. Sophia listed the names and birth dates of her family on the left side, while on the right side, she documented the names and death dates of seven family members. Here, she included Seth, Storer, and Bessie, all of whom died before 1819, when Sophia worked the sampler. The monument in the right foreground memorializes these three children. The deaths of four other family members, Aphia, Caleb, Ellen, and Almira, were added later, after the sampler was initially completed.

Sophia’s fraternal Dyer family descended from Dr. William Dyer, who immigrated in the seventeenth century from Surrey, England to Truro, Massachusetts. Sophia was a member of the sixth generation of the Dyer family in America. Her parents were married on September 14, 1780, and her mother gave birth nearly every two years from 1781 to 1805. The family lived on a large prosperous farm in Cape Elizabeth with fourteen improved acres, ten woodland acres, and fifteen unimproved acres.

While the early generations of the Dyer family have been well recorded, and Sophia’s sampler documents her immediate family members, her adult life is difficult to track down. She had a cousin named Sophia Dyer (b. 1804), the daughter of Ezekiel and Mary Dyer, also of Cape Elizabeth, whose sampler in the Portland Museum of Art is dated July 14, 1817. Genealogical sources have confused the two girls. Nevertheless, the survival of our Sophia’s sampler is a testament to her embroidery skills as well as being the only remaining primary source documenting of her family.