Sampler Provides Clues to Life of 19th Century Fulton County Woman
Bob Cudmore, Focus on History, 4-24-04
A sampler created in 1833 by 10-year-old Mary Ann Pierson of Johnstown has been on display in a bedroom at Old Fort Johnson west of Amsterdam for decades.
Samplers were required educational sewing projects for early American girls. Girls learned the alphabet and how to sew various stitches for their samplers and then used the samplers for examples of specific stitches in future sewing work.
“It was a requirement for women to learn to sew,” said Lori Rulison of Minaville, who serves on the board of the Montgomery County Historical Society, which operates the Old Fort. Rulison was so fascinated by the Pierson sampler that she has created a reproduction of the piece.
“The original sampler was very well done for a 10-year-old girl,” Rulison said. “She must have been very creative and careful with what she did. There are some highly specialized stitches. It has an alphabet and a border. There is a lovely verse: ‘Children look and see what care my parents took of me. They gave me learning in my youth that I might learn to practice truth.’”
After plotting the stitches from the 19th century object on graph paper, Rulison consulted antiques experts to find appropriate colors and materials for the project. She worked from last November to March on the reproduction, which will be raffled this November. The proceeds will go for restoration of the Pierson sampler, which is badly faded, and other samplers at the Old Fort.
Rulison asked an Amsterdam friend with an interest in genealogy, Darlene Gilligan, to find what she could about Mary Ann Pierson, the girl who created the original 1833 sampler.
The sampler was dated and signed with Pierson’s name and age. The sampler had been donated to the Old Fort by former Montgomery County Historical Society president Rebecca Evans of Johnstown and that clue proved most productive.
Gilligan found that Mary Ann Pierson was an ancestor of Richard Evans, Rebecca’s husband. Morris Evans, Richard and Rebecca’s son, said he was aware that the Pierson family were ancestors but not aware until Gilligan did her research that the historic sampler was stitched by his great great grandmother.
According to Gilligan, Mary Ann Pierson’s ancestors came from Yorkshire England to Long Island before 1680 and her grandfather settled in Johnstown, probably after the Revolutionary War. Born in 1823, Mary Ann was the oldest child of Eli Pierson, Junior, a farmer and tanner in Johnstown, and his wife, Amanda Mason of Vermont. Mary Ann’s brothers were manufacturers of gloves and mittens.
Mary Ann married James McMartin, an immigrant from Scotland who became a glove manufacturer in Johnstown. In the 1870 census, Mary Ann and James had seven children, ages five to eighteen. McMartin’s real estate was valued at six thousand dollars. In 1873, Mary Ann died at age 50. The 1880 census showed James McMartin with a new wife, Margaret, raising the remaining children at home. The family in 1880 had a live-in servant.
In 1874, a year after Mary Ann Pierson McMartin died, her daughter Caroline married Richard Evans, who was a member of the first freshman class admitted to Cornell University. After college, Evans founded a glove manufacturing company and his descendants later operated Lee Dyeing Company in Johnstown. Mary Ann’s great grandson, Richard Evans II, and Rebecca Evans were community benefactors, for example giving money to create the Evans Library at Fulton-Montgomery Community College. In 1982, Rebecca Evans donated the 1833 Pierson sampler to Old Fort Johnson.
“Like a lot of us, (Mary Ann Pierson McMartin) must have done a lot of things but nobody ever finds out,” Gilligan said. At least, Mary Ann left behind a piece of folk art that still commands attention more than a hundred years after her death.
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