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Nancy Clark, Tewksbury, Massachusetts, 1818
Nancy Clark of Tewksbury, Massachusetts worked a handsome Family Register sampler in 1818; while the family information is complete, the floral border seems to have proven to be too daunting a task and remains greatly unfinished. Nancy was a younger sister by four years of Sarah R. Clark whose outstanding sampler is also currently offered. The history of the Clark family is fascinating and a great deal of information accompanies the sampler, as original family papers descended with the samplers. Nancy's ancestors had settled in the Massachusetts Bay Colony circa 1630, at the time of the Great Migration; her great-great-great-great-grandfather was Jonas Clark (1619-1700) a ship builder and navigator who lived in Cambridge where he was a highly respected town leader, selectman and ruling elder of the Church of Christ. His son, Thomas Clark (1652-1704), Nancy's great-great-great-grandfather, was a graduate of Harvard in 1670 and continued in the family tradition of leadership and service as a long term minister in Chelmsford, Massachusetts. (He was a great-grandfather to John Hancock, the first signer of the Declaration of Independence, by his daughter Elizabeth's marriage into the Hancock family.) Nancy's parents were Thomas Clark (1766-1827), a farmer, and his wife, Mary Rogers Clark. They lived on land that had been in the family for many generations, where they became the parents of the eight children listed on the sampler. Nancy remained unmarried and was living in Tewksbury with her brother, Joel Clark, and his family in 1855. The sampler was worked in silk on linen and is in very good condition, with a few very minor lost stitches. Interestingly, the penciled lines marking the intended composition of the border remain barely visible. It has been conservation mounted and is in a black molded and painted frame. |
