Sampler

In this large, graphic memorial sampler the word “MY CHILD” is repeated twice in bold capital letters. These words provide an emotional immediacy to Maria Holden Samuels’ grief at the loss of her infant son who “departed this life September 4, 1878/ Age 9 months and 2 days.” At the top of the sampler is a block of inscribed verses, as yet without an unidentified source. The verses include two lines corresponding to the images in the sampler’s center: “Where the green willow weeps” and “His soul is by angels carrast [caressed?]”. The verses are flanked by large red roses. The top three-quarters of the sampler is surrounded by a narrow border of rosebuds and vines that spring from rose bushes blooming on the green lawn below.


Under the inscription block there is a memorial tomb featuring an urn with two crosses. Towering weeping willow grow on either side of the tomb; willows symbolize sorrow and renewal, with their drooping branches and long slender leaves resembling tears. Bright-red butterflies, symbols of immortality, flank the tomb, and four trumpeting angels hover above, symbolizing resurrection. The stitched epitaph at the center of the tomb is an adaptation of lyrics from the hymn “The Way of the Cross,” written by William Cowper (1731-1800) and published in The Olney Hymns, an English hymnal used in American Protestant churches throughout the nineteenth century. The line from the hymn is “Love inscribed upon them all, This is happiness to me,” but Maria changed the first word to “Lord.”


American mourning samplers reached the height of popularity between 1790 and the 1830s. Maria’s example, stitched around 1878, was made much later than others in The Met’s collection, suggesting the tradition endured longer than generally thought. Unlike the earlier delicate silk-on-silk memorials made by schoolgirls, this sampler was stitched by an older woman and embroidered in brightly colored wool yarn on a gridded canvas, reflecting the fashion for Berlin wool work, which was popular in America during the second-half of the nineteenth century. Maria likely copied the design from a published source.


Maria Holden Samuels (1856-1940) and her husband James B. Samuels (1854-1923) were both born in England and immigrated to the United States as young children in around 1860. Married in 1877, they settled north of Albany in Cohoes, New York. Following the death of their first child, Franke, in 1878, the Samuels had two other children, Jane (1883-1970) and Harold (1888-1940).


During the second quarter of the nineteenth century, the Albany area drew experienced English textile workers to the new mills built along the region’s rivers. In Cohoes, James first worked as a cutter in the local cotton and woolen mills. In the 1920s, the Samuels moved to nearby Waterford where James was engaged in the jewelry business. Both Maria and James Samuels were lifelong members of the First Baptist Church of Cohoes where he served as a deacon and she as a deaconess. She was also a longtime member of the church’s Philathea Society, an organization founded in the early twentieth century to promote Bible study for women. Maria was also a charter member of the Imperial Chapter Order of the Eastern Star of Cohoes, a Masonic organization supporting local charities.


On January 1, 1940, at age 83, Maria died in her home at 18 Broad Street in Waterford after a short illness. At the time of her death, she was the oldest member of the Cohoes First Baptist Church. She was survived by her children, two grandsons, and two great grandchildren and buried at the Waterford Rural Cemetery in the Samuels’ family plot.