Embroidered sampler

In Sally Cornelius’s poetic depiction of the Garden of Eden, a moon, a sun, and stars all illuminate the sky in Paradise. As described in the book of Genesis, there are two trees depicted: the tree of knowledge, heavy with red apples, flanked by the figures of Adam and Eve, and the tree of life, blooming with white and yellow flowers, with birds perched upon it. The tree of knowledge has stems of white flowers at its base, and the tempting serpent, stitched in white silk, slithers down the tree trunk. These distinctive motifs are found on two other known Adam and Eve samplers of similar design; one in the collection of The Frances Lehman Loeb Art Center at Vassar College (1960.9.112) and another in a private collection.


Sally’s sampler depicts Adam and Eve each holding an apple from the Tree of Knowledge. This imagery represents the Calvinist interpretation that Adam and Eve were mutually culpable for the Fall. While none of the three known samplers with this type of Adam and Eve motif name the school where they were made, the arcaded strawberry border is typical of New York samplers from both New York City and the counties directly north of the city such as Westchester County, where the sampler was made. A member of the first generation of girls to be born in the American Republic, Sally benefited from the emerging emphasis for educating women and she inscribed along the bottom border this motto thanking her parents for her schooling: “This I Have.Done./To. Let. You. See/What.My Parents/Did. For Me/”.

Sally Cornelius was born in Bridgeport, Connecticut, on May 24, 1792, the daughter of Dr. Elias Cornelius (1758-1823) and his second wife, Rachel Stoker Cornelius (1764-1836). Dr. Cornelius was a descendant of Dutch settlers who came to America in 1639 and he served as a surgeon in the American Revolutionary War. He recorded a detailed account of his capture, imprisonment and escape from the British between 1777 and 1778, which was later published as the Journal of Dr. Elias Cornelius, A Revolutionary Surgeon (1902/03). Family records document Dr. Cornelius’s friendship with George Washington and the Marquis de Lafayette, who he attended during the War, and who gave him the gift of a sword that descended in Sally’s family.


By 1794, Dr. and Mrs. Cornelius and Sally were living Somers, New York where Dr. Cornelius practiced medicine and was a revered member of the community for the remainder of his life. A deeply religious man, in 1806 Dr. Cornelius was a founder of the Red Hill Church in Mahopac Falls. This was the same year Sally stitched her Adam and Eve sampler and it may be that her teacher was a member of that church. Although the extent of Sally’s education remains unknown, the importance of education in the Cornelius family is evident in the well-recorded education and career of her younger brother, Elias (1794-1832). He was schooled to attend Yale College, beginning his undergraduate studies at age sixteen. After completing his education at the Yale Divinity School, he was ordained as a Congregational minister. Following the ideas of church leaders of the day, he was appointed an agent of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions and traveled throughout the northeastern United States preaching sermons and raising money to support the conversion of Native Americans of the Cherokee, Choctaw, Chickasaw, and Creek tribes to Christianity, and establish Christian schools within these Nations.


Sally remained in Somers with her parents until she was 32 years old, when she married Connecticut native Talmon Perry (1791-1826) on September 13, 1824. Following their wedding, Sally and Talmon moved to Bridgeport, Connecticut, where their only child, Talmon Cornelius Perry, was born on February 13, 1826. Seven months after their son’s birth, Sally’s husband died on November 13, 1826, leaving her to raise her son as a single mother. Sally was fortunate enough to have real estate inheritances from her father, her husband, and her husband’s brother that allowed her to remain in Bridgeport, where she guided her son’s education and career to follow her in brother’s footsteps. Talmon also attended Yale (Class of 1846) and was ordained in 1856. The 1874 Bridgeport City Directory lists her as “widow Tallman [sic] at home at 126 Main Street.” She died there three years later at age 51.