Carthage Female Institute (Green and Pink Group)

Carthage, Smith Co.

Penelope C. Williams (1824-1840) was the daughter of Judge Nathaniel W. Williams and Sarah Jane Walton, and the granddaughter of William Walton. William built Walton Road (also known as Cumberland Turnpike and present-day US 70) from Kingston, Roane Co. to Carthage, Smith County. She was eight years old when stitched her sampler at the Carthage Female Academy. Penelope married lawyer Jordan Green Stokes on Feb. 11, 1840. She died about nine months later on Nov. 5, 1840.

Penelope’s sampler is one of the more elaborate in the Green and Pink Group. Her silk ribbon binding is unique among documented Tennessee samplers. Her sampler is the only Tennessee embroidery to be listed in Bolton and Coe’s American Samplers (1921). It was photographed for the National Society of the Colonial Dames in Nashville by the Calvert Brothers, important chroniclers of life in Middle Tennessee.

Photograph courtesy of Neverbird Antiques.