The SamplerLate in the spring in 1879, in St. George's on the west coast of Newfoundland, Mrs. Annabella Butt walked into her kitchen. It was the end of the day. Her dishes were washed and put away. Her mending was done. She opened a cupboard and pulled out a few handfuls of dark brown and grey wool. Then she carefully lifted a paper mat onto her kitchen table. This special, strong paper was filled with small, evenly spaced holes. It was made to have pictures sewn onto it. Annabella sat near the window to catch the last light of day. She threaded her needle. If we could look over her shoulder, we could read the words she had already stitched on to the paper: In Memory of my Son Jesus said Suffer little Annabella was tired after her long day of hard work. But she did not rest. She looked at the picture she was adding to her sampler. It was a picture of a tree in a graveyard. She wondered if she would have enough wool to finish the tree. Then she began to sew. We know very little about Annabella Butt, only her name and where she lived. But we do know that she took time to sew this sampler for her small son who had died. Maybe her family could not afford a gravestone. Or maybe she just wanted everyone who came into her house to know that she did not forget little James. Today, the sampler she made is in the Newfoundland Museum. We do not know why little James Henry Butt died just 17 days after his third birthday. We do know that many children lived very short lives in the 1800s. This was true in the early 1900s too. In fact, in 1910, about one quarter of all the people who died in Newfoundland were less than one year old. The graph on the next page shows that babies were more likely to die than people of any other age. In those days, the mother who could say all her children were alive had something to boast about. Most families lost at least one small child to illness. |
| Previous Page | Table of Contents | Next Page |