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“We have to change the narrative about the work of girls in history. They weren’t invisible.”
Reading between the lines in historic samplers | Lakeville Journal | April 24, 2024
The home in Sharon that Alexandra Peters and her husband, Fred, have owned for the past 20 years feels like a mini museum. As you walk through the downstairs rooms, you’ll see dozens of examples from her needlework sampler collection. Some are simple and crude, others are sophisticated and complex. Some are framed, some lie loose on the dining table.
Many of them have museum cards, explaining where those samplers came from and why they are important.
It’s not that Peters has delusions of grandeur, with those small black or white cards a part of the fantasy. In the past few years, her samplers have gone on outings to historical societies and exhibits. Those small black cards are souvenirs.
About 27 of the pieces from Peters’ collection have just left home again, and are featured at the Litchfield History Museum of the Litchfield Historical Society in an exhibit that Peters guest curated along with the historical society’s curator of collections, Alex Dubois.
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Untold Stories of American Girls at the Sharon Historical Society & Museum | Side of Culture | by Victoria Larson, August 1, 2022
“Rather than relegating itself to dusty shelves and shaky internet connections, the Sharon Historical Society & Museum is a quietly strong and vibrant community center on the village green in the peaceful town in Northwest Connecticut…
The current exhibition by Sharon resident Alexandra Peters, Sharon Collects: Samplers from the Collection Alexandra Peters, is a telling example of the Society’s thoughtful and insightful approach to making history relevant today. With over 60 works on display from 1692 to 1852, Peters brings to light the role of young girls in America. This was the pre-industrial age when girls and their work were invisible to the outside world but highly valued for their achievements. Almost all of the samplers were completed in elementary or boarding schools by girls typically aged eight to 12.”
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Collecting Forgotten History | Mainstreet Magazine | by Christine Bates, August 1, 2022
”Alexandra Peters gave me a private tour of her sampler collection on display at the Sharon Historical Society through October just after this enthralling exhibition opened in June. It was a very personal introduction to the art and meaning of needlework samplers which reveal the lives of American girls and their families from 1700 to 1850. The professionally hung show with informative explanations begins with English maps of the world embroidered on silk. Look closely at the borders of the United Sates or Australia labeled as New Holland. These girls were interested in the entire world. Another global view is a small, fragile, gray silk embroidered sphere meant to be held – one of only 38 embroidered American globes which have survived over two hundred years.”
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ALEXANDRA PETERS | Rural Intelligence, June 11, 2022
“This is very important in the history of women,” says Alexandra Peters. The Sharon, Connecticut resident is talking about the antique sampler collection she’s accumulated over more than 25 years. Samplers reflect American history before and after the American Revolution through the work of girls. The Sharon Historical Society and Museum will be exhibiting a part of her trove in “Sharon Collects: Samplers from the Collection of Alexandra Peters.
I was trained as a psychologist and was a teacher for a long time, and I’ve always loved anything about the history of girls in the U.S. There really wasn’t any information out there that I could find…until I started finding samplers. I started buying them about 25 or 30 years ago, wherever I saw them. I didn’t know much about their history, but I started researching, looking at what dealers had, and researching the girl who made each one. This was before you could really look into things on the internet. Then it became possible to buy them online, and now all the auction houses are online. If I see a sampler I’m interested in, I research as much as I can to decide if I want to buy it.”
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