Little Dog Group

Betty Ring, Dallas, TX

Parthenea Ann Elizabeth Dunigan may have been the only child of Allen Dunigan and Jane Holmes. Sometime before 1840 the family moved to Humbolt, Madison Co., in West Tennessee on the border of Gibson County. When Parthenea was three years old, her mother died. Her father may have sent Parthenea to school in Maury Co., where she could live with extended family.

Parthenea married William Isaac McFarland in 1856 in Madison County. The couple lived in the Gibson Co. area of Humbolt. They had one child, Mary D. McFarland, born in 1859. Parthenea died in 1906 and her husband in 1920. They are both buried in the Rose Hill Cemetery in Humbolt, Gibson County.

Parthenea may have stitched her sampler under the tutelage of Mary D. Patterson as her sampler is very similar to the Mary Elizabeth Terrell sampler (TSS 196) made there in 1846. Both samplers were worked in wool. Even though Parthenea included the date “Spt.18/1848,” the sampler probably remained unfinished. Parthenea most likely taught her cousin Martha Jane Warmarth of Gibson Co. how to stitch the remainder of the sampler using left over yarn. Martha Jane, born in Sep. 1854, was the daughter of Micajah Washington Warmath and Martha Eudaley.

This sampler is pictured on p. 51 of Needlework Treasures: Samplers and Silk Embroideries from the Collection of Betty Ring. The sampler is predominantly red and yellow. Two four-sided borders--the outermost geometric and the innermost stylized leaves--surround a manuscript alphabet, a two-story house, a tree, a little dog, and the signature. A floral dividing band runs through the center.