The elegant embroidered picture was made by an unidentified Charleston worker sometime after 1782. It is made of silk thread on a satin-weave silk ground with linen backing.

Students at the Mary Balch school in Providence, R.I.,produced samplers and other needlework with distinctive floralborders surrounding one or another of the public buildings in town.They also worked in fruit baskets and floral swags and used rococo,rice, diagonal cross, split, Oriental and diagonal darningstitches.

Southern schoolgirl needlework, for the most part, exhibits a noticeable absence of particular themes, except where the embroidery was created in religious schools. The distinction between Northern and Southern embroidery derives from a combination of factors that are geographic, economic and cultural. The agrarian nature of the colonial South, its diffuse population and the institution of slavery gave rise to a society that differed greatly from that of the North.

Settlement in the South began with the arrival of the English in Jamestown in 1607. Later immigrations of Scots, Germans and other Europeans, colonists from Barbados and the French islands, and Africans only added to the rich cultural olio that flourished. An English social structure prevailed over all – complete with its own aristocracy.

Southern embroidery evinces strong English influences, whereas Northern examples, particularly early Boston ones, betray aspects of the Puritan. Newport samplers often featured architecture, and Philadelphian ones exhibit influences of Quakerism.

A sampler wrought between 1820 and 1825 by a girl of the Cherokee nation is one of the favorites of Kathleen Staples, the exhibition curator. The sampler was worked before its removal under the tutelage of Baptist missionaries, and Eliza Bayard was actually the Christian name of the unknown embroiderer’s benefactor.

Mary Bella Hopkins was 12 years old when she completed her sampler on November 28, 1828. She used cross and square eyelet stitches to create a compound of houses suggestive of gentility. The sheep at the bottom are frequently seen in Charleston samplers of the period.

The unusual horizontal configuration of Sarah Ann Walker’s1840 sampler was seen sometimes in western North Carolina andeastern and central Tennessee, and its color (red and green) andthe use of wool yarn instead of silk thread imply Scottishinfluences.

“A Proper and Polite Education” examines the needlework traditions of the antebellum South, at the same time it spotlights the evolution of the education of women. In conjunction with the burgeoning prosperity, an aspiration to gentility developed, fueled by the economy. Improving one’s social position was important. Even more important, however, was education, particularly of women.

Reading and writing were primary, but needlework had its place – if only in the pursuit of gentility rather than utility. Children (girls and boys) attended schools and seminaries or were tutored at home. After the Revolutionary War, female education took on a more serious note and studies expanded to include grammar, arithmetic, science and history. Girls were also instructed in painting in watercolor and on velvet, embroidery, crewel, tambour, netting, beadwork, filigree, artificial flowers and lace making. Skill with the needle was the mark of a cultivated, educated and marketable female. Since a thriving trade in ready-made clothing prospered in the South, particularly in colonial South Carolina, needlework, for some white girls, was almost a social grace. Masters were employed to teach drawing, music, dancing, French and Italian. Such training was key to the gentility to which so many aspired.

Education was not merely for the gentry, however. For African girls who were sent to school, education and skill with the needle assured them a more stable future than they might otherwise have enjoyed. Since ready-made clothing was available in Charleston and other cities, useful needlework would include embroidery of seat covers, curtains and other household articles. One enslaved woman used her considerable needlework skills to sew for families in addition to her master’s and was able ultimately to buy her freedom.

An African American sampler worked by Rachel Ann Lee at the Oblate Sisters of Providence School in Baltimore is dated July 3, 1846. The sampler retains the original black painted frame. The cypress trees and the animals and the nicely dressed woman suggest a southern European theme. Collection of Bill and Joyce Subjack.

In Maryland, where a slave economy coexisted with the largestfree African American society in the United States, and where along tradition of religious freedom prevailed, several religiousorders made it their mission to instruct the young AfricanAmericans. In 1829, a group of African American women from theislands established themselves in Baltimore as the Oblate Sistersof Providence, a Roman Catholic order. They instructed theirstudents in academics and ornamental arts and religion, with theaim of instilling in them the skills to become mothers of familiesor household servants.

Another important bastion of girlhood education, also Roman Catholic, was St Joseph’s Academy, established by Elizabeth Ann Seton, founder of the Sisters of Charity. The goal of the school was the education of girls from poor families, but subsequent financial difficulties prompted the nuns to open their doors to the daughters of the affluent. Students at St Joseph’s produced impressive mourning embroideries and embroidered images of the school’s log building. The quality of the needlework created under the tutelage of the nuns was considered superior then and remains highly prized today. Some 38 embroideries worked at the school have returned there in recent years.

In Charleston, as in Maryland, an influx of French-Caribbean refugees introduced new and desired elements of gentility and refinement. Several opened schools, the most expensive and most desirable of which was Ann Marsan Talavande’s French boarding school that attracted the daughters of the elite. In 1751, Anna Maria Hoyland advertised her services as teacher of reading and sewing in the Charleston newspapers. By 1757, her day school expanded to include boarding students, and she engaged a male teacher to instruct students in writing and arithmetic, dancing, music and French.

Other similar schools taught the daughters and the servants of the gentry. The Quakers, too, were a large presence in the South, particularly in North Carolina and Virginia.

Isabella Elizabeth Safford embroidered the picture in 1800 with gilt metal purl stitch, metal spangles, silk thread, silk chenille, watercolor on a satin-weave silk ground and dated it July 24, 1820. She later married a minister.

In North Carolina, which was more rural than the otherSouthern states, education was closely linked to religion. Childrenof plantation owners were instructed alongside the servants of thehouse, whether they were slaves, free African Americans orindentured servants. The earliest school was the Salem GirlsBoarding School, established in 1772 (and still in operation) byMoravians, who were committed to the education of women.

Jacob Mordecai opened his Female Academy in Warrenton, N.C., in 1809. He was the first to offer a classical education to women. Like other schools of the era, the influence was French and, although Mordecai and his family who helped run the school were Jewish, the school was distinctly Protestant. Mordecai’s Female Academy and the Milton Female Academy, which opened its doors in 1820, drew students from North and South Carolina, southern Virginia and Georgia. Mordecai’s advertised educational aim was “to form the mind to the labour of thinking upon and understanding what is taught.” Admissions were high. Subjects of study included reading and writing, grammar, spelling, composition, history, geography and the use of the globe, arithmetic and the plain and ornamental branches of needlework. Three examples of work by students at the Female Academy are on view.

“A Proper and Polite Education: Girlhood Embroidery of the American South” remains on view through September 30. Founded in 1773, the museum itself was modeled after the British Museum, which was established in 1759. It is America’s first museum.

The Charleston Museum is at 360 Meeting Street. For information, 843-722-2996 or www.charlestonmuseum.org.