Label Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel Type
Object LabelLabel
Sally Cochran (1805–1833)
Family register sampler, 1818
Worked at the Pinkerton Academy, Londonderry, New Hampshire
Silk thread on linen
Cross, satin, and straight stitches
Collection of the Dyer Library and Saco MuseumLabel Type
Cultural/Historical ContextLabel
From the exhibition "Industry and Virtue Joined":
Sally’s lovely sampler is one of a group that has now been connected to the Pinkerton Academy in Londonderry, New Hampshire, and the Adams Female Academy that continued the education of young women, and the iconic sampler style, after Pinkerton stopped accepting females in about 1821. Some of the group, which date from 1818 to about 1825, have elements that strongly link them to samplers made in Lynn, Massachusetts a few years earlier, many of which are in the collection of the Lynn Historical Society. Mary Knight was the preceptress in the year Sally made her sampler. It’s unknown if she was the source for the design, but she did have familial connections to the northeastern Massachusetts area. Sally Cochran was the daughter of cousins Moses and Jenny Cochran. After growing up in Londonderry, she moved with her parents to Pembroke, New Hampshire by 1820. She and her first cousin, Chauncey Cochran, were wed on November 26, 1828. She moved into the Pembroke farmhouse of his widowed mother, where Chauncey ran the family farm. They hired a teen-aged boy, Abraham Prescott, to help out with farm chores. On June 23, 1833, Sally, by then the mother of two toddlers, went out to pick strawberries in the field behind the house with eighteen-year-old Abraham. For some unknown reason—perhaps in a fit of passion--he murdered her there. He was eventually executed for his brutal crime. Chauncey relocated to Corinth, Maine, and later remarried and raised a large family, one of whom eventually settled in Saco, bringing Sally’s sampler with him. Sally’s two children both died in young adulthood.
