Samplers from Charleston, South Carolina.

In the colonial period, visitors to Charleston, South Carolina, often remarked on the diversity of the city's population. By 1710 the colony had become the first province in British North America with a black majority, a situation that persisted for most of the following decades through 1860. (1) By the time of the American Revolution, the city's European population boasted a heterogeneous mix of English, Scots, Irish, Welsh, Germans of various nationalities, French, Dutch, Swedes, Spanish, and Portugese. (2) The girlhood embroidery produced in this community was itself remarkably heterogeneous. Of the five major colonial cities in British North America--Boston, Newport, Philadelphia, New York, and Charleston--only Charleston produced samplers of which no two are stylistically similar. There are no Charlestonian counterparts to, for example, the Adam and Eve samplers of Boston; Newport's "frolicking people" group; the compartmented verse and flower samplers attributed to the Philadelphia instructor Ann Marsh (1717-1797); or the biblical samplers from New York City. (3)

Research has demonstrated that these northern embroideries, with their idiosyncratic and recognizable styles, were the products of a disciplined classroom--usually a boarding school or academy--in which "the schoolmistress probably distributed the same pattern to her entire class." (4) The students were the daughters of the wealthy slice of society whose parents could afford, and were willing, to pay for an "accomplished" education. The "economic success [of these schools] often depended on the ability to 'make a handsome sampler.'" (5) Considering that Charleston was by far the wealthiest city in British North America, and that between 1732 and 1820 at least 148 schoolmistresses advertised day schools, French schools, boarding schools, and academies in its newspapers, it is puzzling that during this period apparently not one teacher elected to recommend herself to prospective patrons through a distinctive sampler style. (6)

[FIGURE 1 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 2 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 3 OMITTED]

[FIGURE 4 OMITTED]

Historians have tried to make sense of this. Perhaps wealthy planters preferred that their daughters be tutored or perhaps southern girls were too persuaded by other diversions to have the patience for embroidery. The primary source evidence, however, is at odds with these explanations. The devastating effects of hurricanes, floods, fires, and wars have also been proposed. While these calamities must be considered when assessing the total number of embroideries that may have been produced in Charleston against what has survived, it does not follow that extant pieces are necessarily unique survivors of large homogeneous groups, all the other members of which were destroyed by natural or man-made disasters. These disparities suggest that in the field of girlhood education Charleston adopted, and adapted, practices that were different from those in northern urban centers.