A linen sampler colorfully embroidered with silk and recently acquired by the Bayou Bend Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, bears the stitched inscription “Jane Freedom’s Sampler. Aged 11 years” (Fig. 1). A young Black girl in Norfolk, a small town in northwestern Connecticut, Jane worked the sampler in about 1830. The piece offers tangible connections to one girl—her name, skill, and educational achievement imbue it with legible signifiers of her identity.
Jane died in 1835, aged just sixteen, only five years after stitching the sampler, which then descended in the family through her brother John Freedom (1823–1903).
Jane’s surname was chosen by her grandfather, Dolphin Freedom (d. 1801 or 1802), on gaining his legal liberty in 1788.1 His son, Peter Freedom (c. 1775–1837), worked as a miller and raised his family in Norfolk.2 With his first wife, Clorony (c. 1774–1809), Peter had a daughter, Clorinda (c. 1805–1869), and with his second wife, Bilhah (c. 1783–1871), he had Amanda (c. 1814–1867; later married Andrew Van Ness), Jane, and John. Bilhah Freedom was posthumously honored by Norfolk residents, who had the following inscribed on her gravestone: “Of African and Princely descent./ Of queenly yet deferential demeanor./ Greatly respected and beloved./ Grateful and happy in her humble lot, tender and true.”3 Clorinda Freedom’s 1868 last will and testament provided for her blended family, including “One Hundred Dollars to be expended for grave stones for myself and my deceased half sister Jane Freedom.”4
Though it is receiving increased attention, Black girlhood needlework is rare, amplifying the importance of knowing where and how Jane would have learned the skill. Much scholarship on girlhood embroidery focuses on pieces created in boarding schools. However, the history of Connecticut boarding schools suggests that it is unlikely that Jane would have attended one. Just a year after Prudence Crandall (1803–1890) opened her boarding school for Black and brown girls in Canterbury, Connecticut, in 1833, state legislation and a mob attack forced it to close.5
Two other Norfolk samplers imply that Jane’s education was local. Anna Battell stitched her sampler at age nine, in 1825 or 1826 (Fig. 2).6 Elizabeth Cone stitched hers at age ten, about 1826 (Fig. 3).7 Both girls were white. All three samplers display similar lettering, cloth and thread colors, layouts, borders, and name and age inscriptions. Strikingly, all three feature an identical strawberry motif along the bottom. This suggests a local needlework tradition in 1820s and ’30s Norfolk, in which both white and Black girls participated. While Jane Freedom’s sampler includes no large figures, like the others’ houses and bouquets, she applied equal skill and seemingly enjoyed equal status.
The other girls’ lives connect to and contrast with Jane Freedom’s. Anna Battell came from a prominent Norfolk family and gave financial support to Yale University and Norfolk’s churches and schools in her adulthood.8 She witnessed Clorinda Freedom’s 1868 will, her brother Robbins Battell was its executor, and other relatives received bequests.9 This connection notwithstanding, Jane Freedom was not likely educated inside the household; she is not listed in the Battell or Cone households in the 1830 United States Census. Elizabeth Cone, unique among the girls, later attended boarding school, the Litchfield Academy, receiving a merit certificate in 1829.10
Cones/ Sampler Age 10” near bottom center and right. Silk on linen, 10 3/4 by 10 1/2 inches. Norfolk Historical Society.
Samplers have various possible purposes. They taught educational skills like literacy, or household skills, including marking linens for organization. They demonstrated girls’ femininity, domestic skill, education, marriage potential, and their families’ refinement. Today, samplers are frequently the only material evidence of the lives and agency of girls, especially Black girls, elsewhere erased, excluded, and silenced. Kelli Racine Barnes writes, “These embroideries reveal young girls who were learning and being taught how to be young Black girls, and all that entails in terms of the performance of domesticity and republicanism. The quiet activism revealed in their embroideries continued with the formation of their families and the support they gave their communities.”11 Their needlework, she writes, was “their creation of themselves and the world around them.”12
Jane Freedom’s sampler is such an act of self-creation, which included stitching her own name. Especially in a society that condoned slavery, that act might have been even more meaningful for a girl named “Freedom.”
I am grateful to Barry Webber of the Norfolk Historical Society for information about the Battel and Cone samplers.
1 Valerie White, “White Family Tree,” on ancestry.com (Freedom family names and life dates are taken from this family tree); Ryan Bachman, “How Did Dolphin Pond Get Its Name?” Norfolk Now: from the Icebox of Connecticut, September 1, 2015, at nornow.org. 2 Theron Wilmot Crissey and Joseph Eldridge, History of Norfolk: Litchfield County, Connecticut (Everett, MA: Massachusetts Publishing Company, 1900), p. 371, at archive.org. 3 Of African and Princely Descent: Norfolk’s Black History (Norfolk Historical Society, 2010), p. 55, PDF available at norfolkhistoricalsociety.org. 4 Probate Records, 1779–1918, Connecticut County, District and Probate Courts, at ancestry.com. 5 “Prudence Crandall Museum, Canterbury,” portal.ct.gov, accessed February 7, 2024. 6 “Battell, Anna, 1816–1889,” archives.yale.edu, accessed March 4, 2024. 7 Some account of the Cone Family in America: Principally the Descendants of Daniel Cone, Who Settled in Haddam, Connecticut, in 1662, comp. William Whitney Cone (Topeka, KS: Crane and Company, 1903), p. 380. 8 Crissey and Eldridge, History of Norfolk, pp. 450–463. 9 Last Will and Testament of Clorinda Freedom, February 12, 1868, Connecticut, U.S., Wills and Probate Records, 1609–1999, at ancestry.com. 10 Elizabeth Cone Kilbourn Reward of Merit, 1829, Helga J. Ingraham Memorial Library, Litchfield Historical Society, at ledger.litchfieldhistoricalsociety.org. 11 Kelli Racine Barnes, “Schoolgirl Embroideries and Black Girlhood in Antebellum Philadelphia,” Journal of Textile Design Research and Practice, vol. 9, no. 3 (September 2021), p. 299. 12 Ibid., p. 300.
ELLA LANGRIDGE was the 2023–2024 Jameson Fellow at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston’s Bayou Bend Collection.
