Museum Collections

In addition to teaching the alphabet and fostering sewing skills, samplers also frequently familiarized girls with Biblical stories. One of the few identifiable groups of New York samplers are those worked with Biblical themes, frequently incorporating Adam and Eve and the Tree of Knowledge. Scholars now believe that these samplers, which first appeared in the 1740s and endured into the nineteenth century, originated in one of the elite French boarding schools for girls in New Rochelle, New York. In one of the most intricate examples of this style, 15-year-old Christina Arcularius's sampler portrays Adam and Eve on either side of the Tree of Knowledge, Jacob's ladder ascending into heaven, and Christ feeding the multitudes loaves and fishes, against a solidly stitched background. These motifs may have been copied from Dutch tiles, a common decorative feature in New York homes also used to teach Bible stories to children. This piece may have served as her final "graduation" work, undertaken only after she completed a simple alphabet sampler. This piece was worked by Christina Arcularius (1777-1860), daughter of tanner Philip J. Arcularius (1747-1825), at an unidentified girls' school in New York City. Christina married prominent grocer Samuel Barker Harper (1777-1860) and lived to the age of 83.