Mary's Handework...

Mary's sampler has come to grace the walls of our keeping room. I will treasure it, admire it, take good care of it & am certain it will serve as inspiration for future work.

I will think of Mary often & wonder...

A school girl named Mary Wrigley of Clearfield, PA completed this piece in 1834, she was 14 years old at the time the piece was completed. Mary was one of 11 siblings born to Robert and Mary Kay Wrigley. Mary's Sampler came complete with a full family history of her parents that immigrated to America from Lancashire, England. The piece measures 18" square with large motifs, common to PA samplers, worked in bright reds and mossy green flosses.

A SAMPLER SPEAKS

I am a small square of linen and some

few yards of thread.

Long years ago, when America was young,

I lay across the lap of a little girl

whose hands patiently patterned me.

Seated on her stool, she faced a table

whereon a candle flickered,

and shadows chased

her busy fingers.

She sewed the alphabet and learned her letters...

formed a verse and learned devotion...

embroidered flowers and learned nature...

worked a border and learned art.

Through me, in part, she learned to be

a woman and a wife.

I was her hope and her despair,

her pride and her love.

She is gone now, and gone are her times

and her ways.

But in me, her sampler, and through her needle,

something of her and her day lives on

as surely as the painter

lives through his brush, the writer

through his pen. Author - unknown.

With thy Needle & Thread,

Brenda