Sampler, 1835
Caroline Love (1824-1898)
Silk on linen, 18.75"H, 21"W
Bennington Museum Collection, Museum Purchase
Caroline Love created this sampler at the Bennington Academy (the brick building on Monument Avenue at the corner of Bank Street). The verse is borrowed from Divine Songs Attempted in the Easy Language of Children (1715) by the popular eighteenth-century hymn writer Isaac Watts. It reads in part:
How will I see my heart to find
Inward adornings of the mind;
Knowledge and virtue, truth and grace,
These are the robes of richest dress.
The Bennington Academy was built in 1821. Girls were admitted a year later and offered classes in needlework and music as well as academic courses.
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