Sampler Archive Project and the History of Women’s Education

For centuries, the most critical and consistent component of women\u27s education was instruction in needlework techniques. Knowledge of the needle arts was essential for clothing the family, as well as furnishing and decorating a home. Until mid 19th century, it was customary for girls and young women attending school to demonstrate and document their expanding needlework accomplishments in a series of projects. These include embroidered samplers with alphabets and verses; family records listing names, births, deaths and marriages; and pictorial scenes from the Bible or Greek classics. Many thousands of these school documents have been preserved - treasured across generations, or pulled into collections by cultural heritage institutions such as museums and historical societies The Sampler Archive Project is an NEH-funded initiative to create a publically accessible online database of information and high-resolution images of all known American samplers and related schoolgirl embroideries. The project is currently working with four major museums to create documentation standards and protocols, and then populate the online database with descriptive information and images for approximately 600 American samplers, which will soon be expanded to 3000. The project\u27s goal is to promote scholarship related to women\u27s history, material culture, and regional decorative arts