Zig Zag Group

Nashville, Davidson Co.

Jane Eleanor (Ellen) Foster (1822-1851)was the eighth child born to Ephraim Hubbard Foster and Jane Mebane Lytle. Her father was a prominent Nashville lawyer. Ellen married Edward Saunders Cheatham in 1841 and moved to Mansfield, the Cheatham home in Springfield, Robertson County. Ellen’s cousins, Ann L. West (TSS 156, 1826) and Martha Ann Lytle (TSS 193, 1834), also worked a samplers.

The verse on Ellen’s sampler, “Remember thy Creator in thy youth,” is drawn from Ecclesiastes: Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth, while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh, when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them (12:1).

Ellen stitched her sampler at age nine, either at Mrs. Scott’s Female Seminary, which was next door to her father’s law office on Cedar Street, or the Nashville Female Academy, where her father was on the board of trustees.