Mary Howe dated this handsome and beautifully stitched pictorial antique sampler "Nov'r19th 1832" - it features a large 16th century manor house on a sloping and brilliant green satin-stiched lawn. The detailed castle-like house, with its crenellated roof and red banners waving, is unusual to find on a sampler. A pair of trees flanks the scene and a pair of baskets of flowers flanks the verse, which was authored by Augustus Montague Toplady (1740-1778), a noted English writer of hyms and poems.  A blue decorative band was worked under the lawn and above Mary’s inscription. Another bold floral band, with lustrous flower buds of red and white, spans the sampler under her name. The border is a deep green stylized vine with flowers. 

Worked in silk on linen, the sampler is in excellent condition. It has been conservation mounted into a beveled bird’s eye maple frame.