A Needlework Sampler, Worked by Euphemia Miller, Hightstown, New Jersey, dated 1823

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Lot Closed

January 25, 08:48 PM GMT

Estimate

6,000 - 12,000 USD

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Lot Details

Description

silk threads on linen

height 15 ½ in. by width 13 ¼ in.

the top section inscribed with the alphabet followed by numbers 1 through 15 and an enlarged repeated alphabet, over a central section inscribed with the verse,

We are a garden wall'd around/ chosen and made peculiar ground/ A little spot inclosed by grace/ Out of the world's wild wilderness/ Awake heav'nly wind and come/ Blow on this garden of perfume/ Spirit divine descend and breathe/ A gracious gale on plants beneath on the left and her signature Euphemia Miller born/ November the 12 in the year/ of our Lord 1812 and wrought this sampler in the year 1823 being in the 11th year of her age on the right, over a lower register with a lady in blue, a gentleman with his dog on the stepped lawn flanking a white two-story house surrounded by arborvitae trees, flowing plants and insects.

the reverse with a label inscribed, This was made by the daughter of Rachel Wilson who made sampler as well as a pencil inscription From Sarah B. Grover to Dorothy Grover Cooper.

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her brother, Robert W. Miller (1805-1881) m. Deborah Flock;

their daughter, Euphemia A. Miller (1844-1917) m. John Van Dyke Beekman (1843-1908);

their daughter, Sarah Beekman (1871-) m. Lloyd W. Grover (1863-1945), East Windsor Township, New Jersey;

their daughter, Dorothy S. Grover (1894-?) m. J. W. R. Cooper, Hightstown, New Jersey.

Josephine Dawes, Hightstown, New Jersey;

James Grievo, Stockton, New Jersey;

Samuel Herrup, Wilton Antiques Show, Wilton Connecticut, 1994.

Hail Specimen of Female Art: New Jersey Schoolgirl Needlework, 1726-1860, Morven Museum & Garden, Princeton, New Jersey, October 3, 2014 to March 29, 2015.

Leslie and Peter Warwick, Love At First Sight: Discovering Stories About Folk Art & Antiques Collected by Two Generations & Three Families, (New Jersey: 2022), pp. 168-69, fig. 305.

Euphemia Miller was the daughter of Rachel D. Miller (1785-1845) and John Miller (1769-1834) born November 12, 1812. Her grandfather, Robert Wilson, was a lieutenant in the militia during the Revolutionary War. She died unmarried at the age of thirty-one in Hightstown, 1843 and left a will leaving her silver teaspoons, her books, and her sampler to her mother. Since Euphemia never married the sampler descended through her brother, Robert W. Miller (1805-1881) whose female descendants married into the prominent Beekman and Grover families of New Jersey.