Sampler
Maker
Anne Longstreet
Period1789
MediumPlied silk thread on coarse linen ground
Dimensions14 × 10.38 in. (35.6 × 26.4 cm)
SignedAt the very bottom of the sampler runs the signature, "Anne Long[s]treet Finnist This Sampler in the 11 / Year of her Age in The Year of our Lord 1789."
ClassificationsNeedlework
Credit LineGift of the Estate of Vera Conover via Ms. Barbara E. Epperson, 1978
Object number1978.21
DescriptionA rectangular sampler on coarsely woven brown linen, worked in plied silk thread in dark green, medium green, olive green, light green, medium brown, russet, tan, and off white. The linen panel is narrowly hemmed along the left, top, and right edges and retains its selvege edge along the bottom. The stitches are worked in both cross and half cross. At the top, a half-inch upper case alphabet is worked from A to O on the first line and P to Z on the second. Below the alphabet curves a floral vine sprouting blue and white blossoms and buds. Below the vine runs a tiny quarter-inch lower case alphabet from A to Z above a narrow horizontal zig zag band. Embroidered below is the signature and verse, reading "Anne Longstreet is my name Amirica is my / Nation Middeltown is my dwelling place / and Christ is my Salvation When I am dead / And Lying in Grave And all my Bones Are / Rotten When This You See Remember me." Below the inscription is worked a bold stylized floral arrangement including a central lobed flower flanked by two large russet and off-white paneled blossoms all emerging from a small two-handled urn. Below the floral motif runs a narrow horizontal checkerboard band. At the very bottom of the sampler runs an additional signature reading "Anne Long[s]treet Finnist This Sampler in the 11 / Year of her Age in The Year of our Lord 1789." A narrow pulled thread border runs along all four edges of the sampler.Curatorial RemarksThe strong and bold floral designs on Anne Longstreet's sampler may well reflect her family's Dutch heritage. It is not known whether, or if, she attended a local school and learned needlework there, or if Anne's mother Williampe Hendrickson (1761 - 1837) or another female relative taught her the necessary embroidery skills. Sources for sampler embroidery are often difficult to track down. The stylized flower and urn motif along the bottom of Ann's sampler may, for example, have been inspired by the blue and white Delft tiles that surrounded the fireplaces in several early Monmouth County homes. Local 18th century limner/artist Daniel Hendrickson (1723 - 1788), a relative of Ann's mother, depicted small two-handled vessels holding flowers in a similar arrangement on two doors he decorated, plus in a portrait of his daughter Catherine. Ann's choice of verse, including the request to remember her when she was "Lying in [my] grave and all my bones are rotten" strikes modern readers as decidedly morbid. In Ann's time, however, it was a simple and realistic acknowledgement of the brevity of life, particularly for infants and small children.This particular verse appears in some of the earliest American-made samplers, and also in even earlier British examples. Four years after completing her sampler, Anne Longstreet married Thomas Seabrook (1771 - 1844) at the unusually young age of fifteen. Prior to 1800, the average Monmouth County girl was almost twenty-two years old at her wedding.NotesAnne Longstreet was born in what is now Holmdel, Monmouth County, on 8 April 1779, a daughter of Dr. Aaron Longstreet (1753 - 1800) and Williampe Hendrickson (1761 - 1837). Her childhood home is now operated as a living history farm museum by the Monmouth County Park System. On 17 December 1794, at the tender age of fifteen, Anne married Thomas Seabrook (1771 - 1844) and went to live in the Seabrook-Wilson House on the Monmouth Bayshore at Shoal Harbor. That historic residence is also now owned by the Monmouth County Park System. The Seabrooks became parents of eight children, two of whom died young. Anne passed away on 10 July 1852, and was interred in the private Seabrook family burying ground. The stones and remains have subsequently been removed to Fair View Cemetery in Middletown. The Association owns a pastel portrait of Anne's mother Williampe Hendrickson Longstreet Pitney by itinernant New Jersey artist Micah Williams (see accession number 1984.501). Miss Vera A. Conover (1896 - 1978) of Keyport, whose estate donated the sampler, was a great-granddaughter of Anne Longstreet.
Collections
ProvenanceAnne Longstreet Seabrook (1779 - 1852); to her son Henry H. Seabrook (1813 - 1872); to his daughter Annie Longstreet Seabrook Conover (1852 - 1943); to her daughter Miss Vera A. Conover (1896 - 1978).
