While Elizabeth Broadhead (1822–1894) was stitching this sampler, little could she imagine that she and her sampler would soon emigrate to New South Wales. Elizabeth was born in Barnside, Yorkshire to David (1799–1872) and Ann (nee March) (1802–1875) and the family emigrated in 1842 aboard the William Sharples. The family settled at ’Inverary Parke’ near […]
Keyword: sampler
Past Ties
This carefully worked child’s apron was made by the small adept hands of Ada Maud Mellshimer (1888-1970). Ada, who preferred to be called Maud, was the youngest of two girls born to Mary (née Crisp) and George Mellishmer from Ulladulla, on the NSW South Coast. Maude worked the apron when a student at Ulladulla Public […]
Patience and Skill
In the 1870s, when Berry schoolgirl Helena Kinneally stitched the buttonholes, fancy borders and darning to create this needlework sampler, she probably didn’t know how useful those skills would later be, when she became the mother of ten children. Helena Kinneally (c. 1868-1904) was born in Victoria about 1868. She was the daughter of William […]
Making Her Mark
Embroidery samplers from the late nineteenth century made by children were often small in size and called ‘marking samplers’. The one shown here was worked by Catherine Frost of Orange in 1872, when she was eight years old. Typically, samplers were made by girls between the ages of five and fifteen, they were the work […]