Needlework made in Indiana · 1818 to 1912
Long before Indiana had county historians, it had schoolgirls counting threads by window light. Every sampler they finished is a dated, signed, and stubbornly durable record of a place. We find them, photograph them, and write down where they live now — one decade at a time.
Eleven representative records appear below. Photography, attributions, and dates are provisional and revised as families come forward.
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Most of the damage we see was done by someone trying to help. Four things worth knowing before you touch anything.
Light is the one loss you cannot reverse. A sampler on a south wall fades measurably within a decade — the reds go first, then the greens turn to straw.
Silk dyed before 1870 will bleed into linen and never come back out. Surface dust can be lifted with low suction through a screen. That is the whole of home cleaning.
Acidic cardboard, wood backing, and old tape are burning a brown line into the linen right now. A conservator can re-mount on washed cotton for less than a picture framer charges.
Whose wall it hung on, which aunt carried it west, what the family called it. That paragraph is harder to replace than the cloth, and it dies with whoever remembers it.
If there is a sampler in your family, we would like to know it exists.
You keep the piece. Always. We ask only to photograph it, take four measurements, and transcribe what it says. A visit runs about ninety minutes, usually at your kitchen table.
We do not appraise, and we will politely refuse if you ask us to. If a piece turns out not to be Indiana work, we will tell you what we think it is and where it likely came from.
Received
Thank you — a volunteer for your county will write to you within about three weeks.
Nothing you sent is published without your written permission.
We started in a church basement in Vincennes with eleven pieces and a shoebox of index cards.
Fifty-two years on, the Survey is still all volunteers — retired teachers, two conservators, a farmer in Parke County who has driven further for a sampler than any of us. We hold no collection of our own. We keep the register, and we keep it accurate.
About a third of the pieces we have recorded are still in the families that made them. That is the part we are proudest of, and the part most easily lost: cloth survives an estate sale far better than the story attached to it does.
Correspondence
The Indiana Sampler Survey
Box 214, Vincennes, IN 47591
Reading room
Thursdays, 1–5 p.m.
By appointment otherwise
Partners
41 county historical societies
Indiana State Museum, Textiles
What we don't do
Buy, sell, broker,
or appraise. Ever.