Hunterdon Samplers is March 18 Lecture Subject

Dan and Marty Campanelli, researchers and collectors of schoolgirl needlework, will speak on Needlework Samplers of Hunterdon County at the Hunterdon County Historical Society’s spring meeting, Sunday, March 18 at 2pm. The public is invited to attend the lecture and PowerPoint presentation at the Flemington Presbyterian Church, 10 East Main Street in Flemington, NJ.  Refreshments will be served. This is no admission charge.

The Campanellis also will hold a “sampler discovery period” after their presentation. Guests are asked to bring their antique needlework, or a photo of it, for an informative discussion.

This program developed because of the overwhelming response to the Campanelli’s November 2009 talk on the four needlework samplers in the Historical Society’s collection. One of those pieces was stitched by a local girl, Elizabeth Runyan of Ringoes in East Amwell Township, and prompted the Campanellis to turn their focus to Hunterdon samplers stitched from the late 1700s to about 1850.

They have identified several creative instructresses giving embroidery lessons to teenage girls throughout the area in the early to mid-1800s, and found that each “school” was unique and varied. The Campanellis will discuss the motifs and designs that now identify samplers as originating from Hunterdon, and how these motifs migrated to the county. They have given names to specific groups of these regional samplers that put Hunterdon County “on the map” in the scholarly world of needlework research.

Stitchers of the Hunterdon samplers to be discussed lived in Alexandria, East Amwell, Franklin, Kingwood, Readington and Union Townships, and in Prallsville and Lambertville. Samplers from Trenton and Pennington, now in Mercer County but part of Hunterdon County until 1838, also are included. The Campanellis’ research details the lives of the teenage stitchers, where they were taught needlework, who they married, and what happened to them later in life.

Needlework from rural Hunterdon is not found in great quantities, unlike in New Jersey’s Burlington or Salem Counties where they have been greatly researched and published over the years. The discovery of these beautiful Hunterdon examples, and the stories of their makers, is a new and exciting field of research. These samplers and their documentation will eventually become a published book by the Campanellis funded by the Edward Thatcher Astle Memorial Scholarship Foundation for the Hunterdon County Historical Society.

As a part of their March presentation, and looking towards the upcoming publication, the Campanellis are seeking more examples of Hunterdon needlework. Anyone with a sampler stitched by a Hunterdon ancestor, or who has purchased a Hunterdon sampler, is encouraged to send photographs and details of the needlework to Dan and Marty Campanelli, c/o Hunterdon County Historical Society, 114 Main Street, Flemington, NJ 08822. Alternately the material can be emailed to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. . The Society’s website address is www.hunterdonhistory.org.

Dan and Marty Campanelli recently had articles published in national magazines relating to the material uncovered about samplers and silk embroideries from their own collection. One article, on a circa 1830 Putnam Family family-register sampler, appeared in the June 2011 issue of Early American Life. Their most recent cover article, released this February, is in the Winter 2012 issue of American Ancestors (a publication of the New England Historic Genealogical Society), about their research that uncovered a new line of descendants eligible for the Mayflower Society.