Embroidered Sampler

In 1841, at the age of twelve, Jenette A. Reynolds embroidered this sampler in Springfield Township, an agricultural community in northeastern Ohio. Because few schoolgirl samplers from this area are known, Jennette’s example provides an important record of regional needlework education. The sampler is organized in two main sections. The upper one has bands of alphabets and numerals, and a verse enclosed with decorative borders. The lower section features a large house set on a strawberry-strewn lawn and flanked by an unusual tree. Stylized classic spot motifs surround the house. A small heart enclosing the initials “S.F.P.” may refer to the sampler’s unidentified teacher.



Jenette was the eldest of five children born to Joseph C. Reynolds (b. ca. 1795) and Elizabeth Hudhisson Reynolds (b. ca. 1798) of Pennsylvania. The family relocated to Ohio in 1833, where Joseph Reynolds established a farm and the two youngest children were born. By the 1840s, when Jenette stitched her sampler, the tradition of sampler making was dying out on the east coast of the United States due to wider public school education gaining popularity for both sexes. It documents how earlier schoolgirl embroidery traditions endured as a feminine accomplishment in more recently settled areas like Ohio.