About Alexandra

Where were the girls in history? For most of the written record, they're hard to find. But they left evidence: thousands of samplers, stitched in silk on linen.

Alexandra Lally Peters is a historian, curator, and collector of samplers made mostly by schoolgirls between 1700 and 1840. Her collection of more than 250 researched and conserved pieces treats these works not as decorative objects but as historical documents. They record what girls learned, what their families believed, who they mourned, and the world they grew up in.

Through these samplers, Alexandra explores women's and girls' history, literacy and education, grief and remembrance, abolition, Quaker influence, and westward migration. The samplers were made while revolutions and abolition movements were unfolding, by girls whose names rarely appear anywhere else.

Works from the collection have been exhibited at the Sharon Historical Society, the Litchfield Historical Society and Museum, and the Salisbury Association, and will be featured in an upcoming exhibition at the American Folk Art Museum.

Alexandra gives talks for museums, historical societies, libraries, and educational organizations, and lends works for exhibitions.

Her MA in Developmental Psychology from Columbia University shapes how she reads these works: as the voices of children, not just examples of needlework. She is also a novelist and essayist.