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Lot Essay
About 5000 souls are said to be in this place, which has the appearance of antiquity; the Houses are old; the streets are dirty; and the common people not very clean.
--George Washington commenting upon Marblehead in 1789, cited in Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework, 1650-1850, vol. I (New York, 1993), p. 131.
Despite Marblehead's unkempt appearance, the town's young women worked some of the most delicate needlework samplers to survive from early America. This needlework pictorial by Rebecca Dixey is a part of a group of 8-10 similar pieces that were undoubtedly designed by and executed under the tutelage of the same instructor. Betty Ring describes Rebecca's work as a "piquant people sampler" and in her discussion of the entire group, remarks, "[t]he incomparable samplers of Marblehead have no foreign counterparts and represent American girlhood embroidery at its best." With its depiction of a man and a woman in garden surrounded by flowers, birds and butterflies, Rebecca Dixey's sampler is most closely related to the work by Lois Hooper dating to circa 1790 (Ring, pp. 131, 133, 134, fig. 150). A Rebecca Dixey married Jonas Dennis in Marblehead in 1801 and it is possisble that she was the maker of this exquisite needlework (Vital Records of Marblehead, Massachusetts, vol. II (Salem, Massachusetts, 1903-1908), p. 115; additional information provided by Carol and Stephen Huber).
--George Washington commenting upon Marblehead in 1789, cited in Betty Ring, Girlhood Embroidery: American Samplers & Pictorial Needlework, 1650-1850, vol. I (New York, 1993), p. 131.
Despite Marblehead's unkempt appearance, the town's young women worked some of the most delicate needlework samplers to survive from early America. This needlework pictorial by Rebecca Dixey is a part of a group of 8-10 similar pieces that were undoubtedly designed by and executed under the tutelage of the same instructor. Betty Ring describes Rebecca's work as a "piquant people sampler" and in her discussion of the entire group, remarks, "[t]he incomparable samplers of Marblehead have no foreign counterparts and represent American girlhood embroidery at its best." With its depiction of a man and a woman in garden surrounded by flowers, birds and butterflies, Rebecca Dixey's sampler is most closely related to the work by Lois Hooper dating to circa 1790 (Ring, pp. 131, 133, 134, fig. 150). A Rebecca Dixey married Jonas Dennis in Marblehead in 1801 and it is possisble that she was the maker of this exquisite needlework (Vital Records of Marblehead, Massachusetts, vol. II (Salem, Massachusetts, 1903-1908), p. 115; additional information provided by Carol and Stephen Huber).