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Region: West Tennessee
1838 Kezia Ann Simonton

18"V x 834"H © TSS 250
fibers: silk
ground: linen
Biography:
Kezia Ann Simonton (1827–bet. 1862–69) was the eldest child of Robert Gharton Simonton and Mary R. Sevier. The family lived in Purdy, McNairy Co., where her father was a carpenter and cabinet maker. She married Samuel Farmer about 1844, and the couple had six children.

Kezia and her family moved several times, to Jackson, Madison CO.; to Huntingdon, Carroll Co.; to Mifflin, Henderson Co.; and finally to Placerville, El Dorado Co., CA, to join her father, who had relocated to the West Coast. She died there sometime before 1870.
Description:
Kezia's sampler is long and narrow, a shape that was being replaced by square samplers by the 1830s. Her sampler features a variety of stitches: cross, cross over one, double herringbone, eyelet, four-sided, long armed cross, queen, and rice. Her verse is from Isaac Watts' Verse 1 and 2, Song IV, "Whene'er I Take My Walks Abroad."

Photograph courtesy of M. Finkel & Daughter, Philadelphia.