Far from rural, schoolgirl needlework of federal Maine sheds much light on the culture of the period and the place. The exhibition “I My Needle Ply with Skill: Maine Schoolgirl Needlework of the Federal Era,” on view at the Saco Museum and Dyer Library through March 2, is the result of careful and extensive study of the early schools of the area and the needlework produced in them. More than 100 samplers and other needlework drawn from the collection of the museum and library, historical societies and other public and private collections are on view.
They illuminate the culture and society of federal Maine, as well as the education of young, aspiring females. Moreover, they speak to the artistry of the needlework and the creativity and skill of these practitioners. What is of particular interest is the detailed and precise information unearthed so far about the needlework, their makers, their family connections and the women who ran the female academies where needlework was taught.
As female academies began appearing in the late Eighteenth and early Nineteenth Centuries, they offered educational opportunities for girls not previously available. Academic subjects, such as writing and mathematics, reading, music, painting, drawing and geography, were taught along with the so-called “female arts,” needlework of all kinds. Some schools offered an academic curriculum only, in line with the contemporary thinking about female education.
The exhibition is organized in four parts. It begins with Industry Taught in Early Day: Massachusetts Beginnings, a discussion of Maine’s rising middle class whose cosmopolitan aspirations and affluence led them to send their daughters south to Boston to attend female academies.
Saco resident Elizabeth Cutts was sent to study at Eleanor Druitt’s female academy in Boston. Cutts advertised her services and instruction in French, reading, English and orthography in addition to fancy needlework. Cutts made a fancy coat of arms in silk, gold and silver thread, with an eglomisé mat and a custom frame. It held pride of place in her parents’ home.
It should be remembered that while Maine remained part of Massachusetts until 1820, the very latest styles would have arrived late. By the late Eighteenth Century, however, a number of such schools were well established in Portland.
The earliest known school was run by Sarah Jenkins Price, who had run a female academy in St Kitts after the death of her husband. When her daughter married a Portland sea captain in 1762, she moved with them to Portland and opened a female academy in 1776. It operated until at least 1810.
Rachel Hall Neal, widowed at 25 just after the birth of twins, opened her academy in 1794 in Portland, offering reading and writing and cyphering, in addition to plain and fancy needlework. Her students were largely the daughters of rising merchants, tradesmen and craftsmen interested in the proper “finishing” of their daughters. Female education and a sea change in the social structure had arrived.
In late 1803, the Misses Martins’ School for Young Ladies opened in the Martin family home in nearby North Yarmouth and soon relocated to Portland. The Martin family had come recently from England; the parents William and Elizabeth ran the school and daughters Elizabeth and Penelope, described as “cultured English ladies,” provided instruction. About the time their school closed around 1832, the Martins published a list of 582 girls who had attended their academy, complete with the hometowns of most and the spouses of half.
Financial need seems to have been the driving force behind the establishment of many female academies. A number were opened by women who had been widowed and left in straitened circumstances. The widow Elizabeth Bailey Dawes came from Derby Academy in Hingham and around 1803 opened a school in Portland, which she maintained for two years before she left town to remarry. In her first year she counted 31 students. Sally Perry opened a school in about 1805 and operated it until her marriage two years later. Martha Merchant Mayo and her daughters opened a school around the same time that lasted for many years. Again, the impetus was need, as her husband, Simeon Mayo, was unable to support his family because of alcoholism.
Mayo’s daughter, also Martha, is thought to be the designer of a group of genealogical samplers decorated with cherubs with thick neck ruffs †which gave rise to densely bordered samplers.
As the academies took root and prospered, educated girls were turned out and new styles of needlework, peculiar to Maine, evolved. After 1820, elaborate silk thread and paint on silk works were made in Portland.
The second part of the exhibition, Industrious Ingenuity: The Rise of Urban Sophistication in Maine and Portland’s Evolving Embroidery Style, explores the growth of Portland-area female academies and their particular styles of needlework. Traditional female academies flourished in Maine long after most died out elsewhere.
An effort has been made to categorize Portland needlework according to shared design elements and to assign those groups to specific teachers wherever possible. Curator Leslie Rounds and her research assistants, Camille Smalley, Marie O’Brien and Jill Jakeman, examined some 200 Maine schoolgirl needleworks, comparing them for stylistic similarities, the locations and connections of the makers and the biographical information revealed. Basing their work on that of previous scholars, they dug even deeper and made some interesting discoveries and located some previously unknown samplers.
A group of samplers that dates from 1804 to 1820 were wrought with the queen stitch rose border and a genealogical design. One of these, an 1804 example by Deborah Gordon, is thought to have been made at Rachel Hall Neal’s academy. Others by Lydia Dutch and Eliza Clapp, also Neal students, were made with the same queen stitch border and with a village scene at the bottom. Over the next 20 years the queen stitch roses evolved into satin stitch blossoms. Students at other Portland academies produced similar examples, which will be researched further.
The third section, How Letters Great and Small Are Wrought: Individual Creativity and Portland’s Influence on Rural Academies, surveys schoolgirl embroidery known to have been wrought in other parts of the state. That needlework styles had migrated in tandem with the population was clear.
Augusta’s 1815 Cony Female Academy produced the next largest cache of work after Portland schools. A rose bordered genealogical sampler incorporated and modified the Portland sampler. Cony samplers also included the name of the school. Other schools opened inland and along the coast in such towns as Hallowell, Chesterville, Bridgton, Fryeburg and Gorham and Bethel. In the easternmost community of Eastport in 1846, Sarah Cheney made a genealogical sampler akin to those made 30 years previously in Portland.
After Maine separated from Massachusetts, its coastline still measured some 3,500 miles to the Canadian border, enfolding dozens of communities like Bath and Saco where girls were instructed in needle arts.
The final section of the exhibition, The Various Texture of the Twining Thread: Where Did All That Creativity Lead?, takes a look at needlework of Nineteenth Century Maine. The needle skills learned at female academies stayed with these girls throughout their lives, although the schools did not persist due to the age of the women who ran them and the appearance of public education for women.
The young women decorated their households with their textiles, regardless of any utilitarian nature. By the latter part of the Nineteenth Century machine-made clothing was readily available and refined needle skills were no longer required to clothe their families. Instead, the young women turned to other decorative pursuits: crochet work, tatting and embroidery prevailed. Yarn sewn rugs appeared and then hooked rugs.
The exhibition is accompanied by a 160-page catalog, I My Needle Ply with Skill: Maine Schoolgirl Needlework of the Federal Era , written by Leslie Rounds, curator and executive director of the Dyer Library and Saco Museum. The exhibition and catalog were supported by a grant from the Coby Foundation.
The Saco Museum is at 371 Main Street. For information, www.sacomuseum.org or 207-283-3861.
