(re)making the past

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Mary Johnson Sampler, Williamsburg, VA, 1742. Courtesy of The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation, Museum Purchase. Mary was approximately 12-years-old when this sampler was completed.

Learn to Sew: Two-Sided Cross Stitch

Mary Johnson’s needlework demonstrates one of the best extant examples of a sampler specific to Williamsburg, Virginia. Although this sampler was done by a young white girl, needlework was likely taught at the Williamsburg Bray School based on the school regulations and other comparative Bray Schools. Note the use of marking stitches to embroider words and phrases. For a short tutorial on this stitch from the Royal Society of Needlework, just click anywhere on this page!

Researched, Designed, and Created by The William & Mary Bray School Lab, with special thanks to Rachel Hogue and Nicole Brown.

What does it mean to be a Black craftsperson in 18th-century Williamsburg? How does the education at the Williamsburg Bray School play a role in this story? The William & Mary Bray School Lab invites you to explore the complicated relationship between Black girls, enslavement, and sewing in 18th-century Williamsburg. By clicking on an icon, discover how Bray students permeate the history of needlwork in colonial Virginia and beyond. To learn more, please read the W&M Bray Lab blog post below:

Girlhoods Intertwined: Female Education and Slavery in Eighteenth-Century Williamsburg

(re)making the past:

Black Girls, Sewing, and Education at the Williamsburg Bray School

Schoolgirl Embroideries & Black Girlhood in Antebellum Philadelphia

Mary D'Silver Sampler

The Sampler in the the background of this interactive map was made by Mary D'Silver, a student at the Philadelphia Bray School in 1793. While no extant samplers from the Williamsburg Bray School students are known to exist, needlework like this was offered as part of the curriculum across Bray schools. To learn more about this sampler and ongoing research about it, read the following scholarly article linked below:

Both free and enslaved Black girls attended the Williamsburg Bray School, making up approximately 50% of the students. Black women and girl's labor in urban domestic environments required them to participate in highly skilled and initmate settings within their enslaver's household; it is likely that many of these girls were sent to the Bray School to learn how to serve as enslaved lady's maid or household domestics. To learn more about the life of an enslaved lady's maid, please watch scholar Cheney McKnight's first episode of herThese Roots series.

RNS Online Stitchbank

Backstitching is one of the skills that Bray School students likely learned either at the Bray School or in their time at home. This tutorial from Burnley & Trowbridge will help you learn how to master the backstitch. To learn more about stitches which were frequently used during the 18th century, you can peruse the Royal School of Needlework's online stitchbank. You can visit the stitchbank by clicking on the link:

Bray School Rules and Sewing

Robert C. Nicholas and William Yates to the Bray Associates, September 30, 1762, transcription

The link below directs you to a primary source that provides insight into the curriculum of the Williamsburg Bray School and sewing. The source lists the proposed school rules. Rule number eight specifies sewing and knitting for female students (located on page 8). This source also contains a list of student names (located on page 5).