1788 Elizabeth Shoemaker Needlework Sampler
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GUEST:
I know that it came into our family when my mother's mother passed away. I took an interest in it 30 years back and was looking at these words that were on the back of the sampler that described the sampler having been done by this woman Elizabeth, married to Daniel Stroud of Stroudsburg. Looked up possible places on a map, and decided this must be Pennsylvania. This was my fourth-great- grandmother did the sampler, and my fourth-great-grandfather is Daniel Stroud of Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania. The father, Jacob Stroud...
APPRAISER:
Jacob.
GUEST:
had apparently given the name to the town.
APPRAISER:
It's beautiful, and it's a remarkable survivor, because, as you have indicated, it was worked by Elizabeth Shoemaker, her work in 1788. So that's a really early date. She probably emigrated to the United States from Germany. She met Daniel Stroud. And they were married. In fact, they were married about four years after the sampler was worked. She was 14 when this was worked. And she was married at 18. These were things that were part of a young woman's education. It's worked in silk threads on a linen ground. And these colors have remained remarkably vibrant. They're vegetable dyes that were used to dye the silk used in the embroidery.
GUEST:
Mm-hmm.
APPRAISER:
And they're fugitive. We feel that the insurance or replacement value on this piece would be somewhere in the vicinity of $25,000.
GUEST (sputtering) (laughing): Really? That's, that's amazing to me.
APPRAISER:
Right. It's a winner.
GUEST:
I... I'm... speechless. (laughs) I... I thought it had a couple of thousand dollars of value.
APPRAISER:
Yeah.
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