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This sampler belongs to the earliest identifiable group of Philadelphia samplers, those worked under the instruction of school-mistress Elizabeth Marsh. An English Quaker, Mistress Marsh came to Philadelphia in 1723, where she taught needlework to the daughters of many prominent Philadelphians. Elizabeth Hudson stitched a typical border of small carnations within an undulating line, and used seven arcaded horizontal band patterns, one of which depicts variegated strawberries in complex queen's stitch (later renamed rococo stitch). In the minute cross stitches used for most of her sampler, fifteen-year-old Elizabeth listed the names of her Quaker family members and embroidered a lengthy verse, part of which is now barely visible against the yellowed linen ground.