TALKS
“Maybe to understand women in history, we need to use a different lens... I found that lens in samplers.”
In-Person /Online Lecture
The Scoville Library
38 Main Street, PO Box 455
Salisbury, CT 06068
Remarkable for their inventiveness and beauty, needlework samplers are historical documents written by girls on silk and linen with needles. Alexandra Peters will talk about how these needleworks made before 1850 show us life before the Industrial Revolution from the often surprising perspective of young women.
Presented in partnership with the Salisbury Association Historical Society, Alexandra Peters' talk at the Scoville Library coincides with an exhibit of her samplers at the Salisbury Association's Academy Building, 24 Main Street, Salisbury, CT, from February 15th to April 30th, 2025. Visitors are welcome during the Salisbury Association's open hours: Tuesday through Friday, 10:00 AM - 1:00 PM, and Saturday, 10:00 AM - 3:00 PM.
Alexandra Lally Peters is a sampler collector and historian who first encountered a schoolgirl sampler that she could buy forty years ago and was so startled to be holding history in her hands that she hasn’t stopped buying them since. Alexandra researches every sampler she buys – sometimes, she will admit, a little obsessively. She loves turning up intriguing information about the lives of the real girls who sat down in school to pierce their linen and silks with needles, two to three hundred years ago. She lives in New York City and in Sharon, CT, with a lot of samplers that explain so much about the lives of women in the past.
The 2025 exhibition at the Salisbury Association is a selection from Alexandra's curated collection, which includes over 150 samplers (ever growing!) stitched by girls, mostly aged 5-16, between 1698 and 1850. The collection is primarily American, with several British, as well as a few Dutch and French samplers.
Know My Name: How Schoolgirl Samplers Created a Remarkable History
To accompany the opening of their newest exhibit, “With Their Busy Needles: Samplers and the Girls Who Made Them”, The Litchfield Historical Society was delighted to welcome guest curator, Alexandra Peters, for a lecture title “Know My Name: How Schoolgirl Samplers Created a Remarkable History” on Sunday, May 5, 2024, at the Litchfield History Museum. The power of the needle wielded by girls in the creation of samplers has often been overlooked in early American history. Revolutions were taking place, abolitionists were fighting slavery, and literate schoolgirls were sewing thousands of samplers that were meant to show off their accomplishments. The samplers they stitched, often strikingly beautiful, give us a surprising way to look into the lives of these girls, their families and the changing world around them.
Read More
Christine Merser Interviews Alexandra Peters: All About Samplers | Dec 22, 2022
Alexandra Peters’ collection of Samplers from the girls who went before us is riveting. The history behind them. The artistic nature of them. Their relevance to what ’she’ was facing in the 1800s will have your head spinning. Do not miss this interview with the brilliant Alexandra, who teaches us so much in the hour she spent with our fearless leader Christine Merser for Ladies Who Launch. You will find yourself heading up to your attic to see if by chance any of your ancestors happened to do a sampler that tells the story of her message to the world and your family's values.
Link to the video
SHARON COLLECTS: Samplers from the Collection of Alexandra Peters
Audio Interview by Robin Hood Radio
Duration: 00:11:57 | Recorded on June 17, 2022
Before adding a sampler to her collection, Sharon, CT resident Alexandra Peters researched the lives of the sampler makers and the world revealed by their needlework. The girls in this collection were touched by abolition, the Underground Railroad, and the anti-slavery movement. A few girls settled the Connecticut Western Reserve, others were educated at the three exceptional academies for girls in northwest Connecticut. Quaker girls created elegant darning samplers, and older girls stitched elaborate tales from classical history and literature. Some girls in England sewed world maps. Other girls in the United States documented their family histories, sisters worked companion samplers, and the women of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s family subtly influenced his storytelling with their needlework. Writing with needles, these sampler creators left us a powerful legacy that opens a window into the early education of girls, who their families were, and how they documented their very existence.
Link to audio