Name/Title
Sampler [Needle Point] | Margaret Ann Dunkerton | 1847 | Eastport, MaineDescription
A mid-19th century hand stitched sampler that according to stitched writing on the sampler dates to 1847 and was made by 11 year old Margaret Ann Duckerton of Eastport, Maine. There appears to be some discrepancy as to Margaret Dunkerton's actual age at the time she made the sampler or the date of the sampler as records indicate she was was born in 1838 in Windsor, Nova Scotia. This would put her age at nine and not 11 when she made the sampler. Soon after Margaret’s birth, her family moved to Eastport. The making of samplers was a common activity for girls during this time as a way to help teach basic needlework skills while including the alphabet, numbers, important quotations and family history. Margaret’s sampler has several of these elements in a well made and well balanced design. There is what might represent the family house and fence at the bottom of the sampler, a quotation from the King James version of the Bible (the Book of Numbers, Chapter 13, Verse 23), and above the quotation two men in period clothing with a hawk in a tree branch on either side. Three sides of the sampler are framed with a vine like scroll. Margaret went on to marry James Lawrence in 1855 and together they had six children. She lived the rest of her life in Eastport until 1935 dying at the age of 97 and is buried in Hillside Cemetery in Eastport. The sampler was handed down through later generations of the Dunkerton-Lawrence family and eventually turned up for auction in California in 2008. The Tides Institute acquired the sampler at this auction.
Photo caption: Mid-19th century hand stitched sampler that according to stitched writing on the sampler dates to 1847 and was made by 11 year old Margaret Ann Duckerton of Eastport, Maine.
Artist: Margaret Ann Dunkerton
Medium: Needlepoint
Circa: 1847
Old Accession Number: 117