The Sampler Archive Project is pleased to announce that it is collaborating with the Vermont Statewide Sampler Initiative to locate, photograph, and document American samplers and related girlhood embroideries held in Vermont’s public and private collections. Initial partners are the Bennington Museum in southern Vermont and the Shelburne Museum in northern Vermont. Both museums have excellent collections of schoolgirl samplers and needlework pictures, many of which were made by girls living in Vermont and other northern New England states.

Samplers made by girls and young women living in Vermont are less well known than those of any other New England state. In Betty Ring’s 1993 two volume publication entitled Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers and Pictorial Embroidery 1650-1850 there is literally no mention of samplers from Vermont. And there have been no published articles, monographs, or books focusing specifically on Vermont samplers to help fill that gap. Vermont samplers, however, are out there and the Vermont Statewide Sampler Initiative is working to bring them to our attention. It will focus on locating, photographing and documenting samplers in the collections of Vermont’s museums, historical societies, historic homes, and private collectors. To facilitate the documentation of privately held samplers the Vermont Statewide Sampler Initiative plans to host multiple Sampler ID Days around the state over the next couple of years. And because this initiative is collaborating with the Sampler Archive Project, information and high-resolution images for all American samplers uncovered in Vermont collections will be available to the public on the Sampler Archive website.