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Sampler (USA)
This is a Sampler. It was embroidered by Mary Fitz and student at Mrs. Buchanan's School, Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. It is dated 1819 and we acquired it in 1941. Its medium is silk and human hair embroidery, cotton foundation, silk ribbon and its technique is embroidered in cross, half cross, satin, stem, rococo, feather and buttonhole stitches on plain weave foundation. It is a part of the Textiles department.
This sampler was worked by Mary Fitz (1807–1849) in 1819 at Catherine Welshans Buchanan’s school in Wrightsville, Pennsylvania. The central scene depicts two fashionably dressed women in a grape arbor, one standing and the other seated on a bench. The border is made up of compartmentalized motifs including a heart, baskets of grapes and flowers, flowering sprigs, birds, a house, two boys playing, and an inscription. The rendering of the boys is likely based on a painting by William Hamilton (1751–1801) entitled “Playing at Marbles,” from his Children at Play series. A related sampler in the collection of the Reading Public Museum, featuring similar ladies and an identical bench within a naturalistic floral border, was worked at Mrs. Buchanan’s School in 1823 by Ann Osborn.
Catherine Welshans Buchanan (1792–1852) taught in Maytown, Wrightsville, and Marietta. Samplers worked under her instruction are very similar to those made at the Lancaster and Harrisburg schools of Leah Galligher Maguire (1764–1830). Elements found on samplers from the Buchanan school, such as pastoral scenes, compartmentalized decoration, and the use of human hair and metallic thread, appear to have originated at the Maguire school. Catherine was evidently influenced by Leah’s sampler patterns, and may have even studied at her Harrisburg school.
Mary Fitz was one of twelve children born to Jacob Fitz (1780–1839) and Susana Herr (1783–1838) of York County, Pennsylvania. She married Joseph Bucher (b. about 1810), a shoemaker from Marietta, in 1830 at St. John’s Lutheran Church in Maytown. The couple moved to Cumberland County and had at least five children: Theodore (b. about 1832), George Washington (1835-1858), Amanda (b. about 1840), and Joseph (b. about 1842), and a daughter (b. about 1844) whose given does not appear in census records. Mary died at the age of forty-one and is buried at Salem (Hope) Methodist Cemetery in Hampden Township.
This object was featured in our Object of the Week series in a post titled Children at Play.
This object was
bequest of
Mrs. Henry E. Coe.
It is credited Bequest of Mrs. Henry E. Coe.
Its dimensions are
H x W: 58.5 x 60.5 cm (23 1/16 x 23 13/16 in.)
It is inscribed
Mary Fitz a daughter of Jacob and Susana Fitz was born in York County September the 24 1807 and made this Sampler in Wrightsville in Mrs. Buchanan's School in the Year 1819
Cite this object as
Sampler (USA); Embroidered by Mary Fitz (American, b. 1807); Student at Mrs. Buchanan's School, Wrightsville, Pennsylvania; silk and human hair embroidery, cotton foundation, silk ribbon; H x W: 58.5 x 60.5 cm (23 1/16 x 23 13/16 in.); Bequest of Mrs. Henry E. Coe; 1941-69-26
