Sampler

Stitched in multicolored silk threads, this New Jersey band sampler provides a visual link to eighteenth and nineteenth century samplers made in Philadelphia, as well as other rural Pennsylvania samplers. Here, three carefully laid out decorative bands are surrounded by a narrow evenly spaced zig-zag border on a large, nearly square piece of tan linen. The top band includes numbers 1 to 9, and a verse likely paraphrased from Biblical verses referring to “falling asleep in the Lord”, suggesting that the death of a pious Christian does not need to be mourned. The use of colored thread for the first letter in each word of the four-line verse is a device often found on nineteenth century Philadelphia samplers. The bold middle band features a stylized down-facing rose flanked by abstract pink carnations, and is a design more commonly found in earlier eighteenth-century Philadelphia-area samplers. In the bottom band, a central flower anchors mirror-image pairs of leafy trees, flowers, birds, beasts and black dogs. This symmetrical design and the motifs relate to Pennsylvania-German samplers.

Abigail Ridgway was born in Burlington, New Jersey, on June 5,1778, a month after the British bombarded the Burlington Wharf on May 8 during the American Revolution. Born into a Quaker family who were likely pacifists, Abigail was five years old when the war ended. She was the ninth of ten children born to Joseph Ridgway (1731-1811) and Mary Coates Ridgway (1738-1789). When Abigail was 34 years old, she married David Barton Bullock (1785-1850) on April 15, 1813, at the Mt. Holly Quaker Meetinghouse. David was a sailor and the Bullock family were among the English Quakers that immigrated to New Jersey in the early eighteenth century. Abigail and David’s only child, Israel Ridgway Bullock, was born in 1815, but died the following year. Abigail lived another ten years and died on December 25, 1825 in Mt. Holly, New Jersey.

While we have little documentation of Abigail’s adult life, testament to the artistic merit of her sampler is found in its history of ownership. For many years it belonged to the New York artist, collector and critic Alexander Wilson Drake (1843-1916) whose extensive collection of samplers, needlework and decorative arts was sold at auction in 1917. In 1921, Abigail’s sampler was owned by Belle Skinner (1866-1928), a Massachusetts heiress and humanitarian known for financing the restoration of the French medieval town of Hattonchâtel after it was destroyed during World War I. Following Miss Skinner’s death, the sampler’s ownership is unrecorded until 2001 when it was offered to The Met.