Samplers, Gentility, and the Middling Sort
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 19352104 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jennifer Van Horn (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2005 |
| Volume | 40 |
| Issue | 4 |
| Pages | 219-248 |
| Publication date | 2005-12-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Winterthur Portfolio (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0084-0416 • E-ISSN: 1545-6927 |
| Publisher | University of Chicago Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1086/511168 |
| OpenAlex | W2113576738 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 2 |
| References cited | 9 |
Samplers are an important, yet often overlooked, component of class and identity formation in early America. This article reevaluates the genteel practices of the middling sort through analysis of ten samplers produced between 1798 and 1802 at Leah Galligher's school in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Rather than emulating the upper sorts, these samplermakers incorporated gentility within their rank's pattern of life to produce a sense of middle‐class cohesion. Used by the schoolmistress to bolster her own suspect respectability and by her students as markers of their intermediate social position, the samplers reveal a complicated relationship between the middling sort and refinement
Aesthetics · Art · Cohesion (chemistry) · Criminology · Identity (music) · Rank (graph theory) · Sociology · sort · Suspect · Chemistry · Historical Studies on Reproduction, Gender, Health, and Societal Changes · History · Mathematics · Race, History, and American Society · Social and Cultural Dynamics
| Citations per year | 0.29 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2019 - 2024 (6) |
| Highly cited | No |