GUEST: So I brought an antique sampler that I inherited from my father, who inherited it from my great-grandmother, his grandmother, who is from Nashville, Tennessee. Her maiden name was Franklin, and the Franklins are a big family in Gallatin. This came into the family, we think, through a distant marriage to somebody in the Cage family.
APPRAISER: One of the reasons we want to share it with our viewers today is because indeed it is signed by the Female Academy in Gallatin, Tennessee, and dated 1831. The schoolgirl samplers were primarily created up north, and when people think of a schoolgirl sampler, they think of the Boston school, they think of the Rhode Island schools. And it's rare that we see a named school
from the Southern states.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: This border over here is actually strawberries.
GUEST: Oh!
APPRAISER: And the day it was made, those would have been red.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: So, it would have been very vibrant.
GUEST: Yeah.
APPRAISER: The material is a muslin material. And the stitches, the thread is all silk. It does have clear condition issues…
GUEST: Right, the hole.
APPRAISER: …with part of the material missing. The fading on the color. But the valuation is really based on the fact that it's from a rare academy. We have seen one or two from this academy in Tennessee. Its age, 1831, is just at the cusp of going out of style, actually.
GUEST: Oh, okay.
APPRAISER: The real heyday for the schoolgirl samplers were about ten to 20 years earlier than this. So we love to see them from a Boston school from about 1810.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: But she was probably, at that time, she was probably 12 or 13 years old. So they did these as young ladies, as an apprenticeship to show men that they could actually sew and be very fastidious in their stitching. We're going to put a value on this today in the context of saying that it's a family piece, until you do further research, and we're going to put an insurance value on it today of $5,000.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: Because we have seen material from this academy sell for that price range, and I would think, as a family piece, you would want to keep it and just insure it for $5,000.
GUEST: Well, that's great to know-- thank you.
