The sampler has eight rows of alphabets and numerals with dark blue cotton thread, probably dyed with indigo dye. At the end of the second line is “1859”, presumably the date she completed the sampler. (As such, Nancy was fifty-two years old when the sampler was completed suggesting that the sampler was made as a teaching tool during her time at the South Union Shaker Village. See below.).
A somewhat unusual ampersand (seen on other Shaker samplers) is at the end of the first line and in the middle of the sixth line.
The signature reads:

Nancy Ely Moore
was born 1. Sept. 1807
Warren Couty, Ky

At the end of the eighth line are the initials “N E M” in pink or faded red cotton or silk. (Please see the inverse verso and the verso in the ancillary images.)

Nancy Ely (Elam) Moore was born on September 1, 1807, in Warren County, Kentucky when her father, Jesse Williams Moore (1755-1815), was fifty-two years old, and her mother, Lucy (Lucille Lucinda) (1772-1814), was thirty-five. Her siblings included James W (1794-1864), Thomas (1795-?), and Mary Ann (?-?).

There is no history of Nancy being married or bearing offspring.

Eldress Nancy Moore was a member of the South Union Shaker Village in Auburn, Logan County, Kentucky and was brought there when she was four years old.
In the Warren County 1810 census, the only Jesse W. Moore is listed with neighbors that suggest he was just east of the town of Bowling Green and definitely within the current Warren County borders. Interestingly the census shows just two persons. A white male between ten and fifteen years of age and a white female under ten. This raises the possibility that the parents were already at South Union and left two children at home... or they refused to go.
When Nancy was fifteen, she moved to the Shaker colony at Black Lick Creek in Auburn, Kentucky and returned to South Union five years later. Nancy served in numerous ministerial roles, including being appointed as an assistant to Eldress Betsy Smith in 1849. She also made several visits to Shaker colonies in Ohio, New York, and Massachusetts. She was appointed an Eldress of the Church in 1864.

During a portion of the Civil War, during her time at South Union, Eldress Nancy kept a diary, “… which runs from 15 August 1861 to 17 January 1863. The original diary is owned by the Dayton [Ohio] Public Library. Eldress Nancy’s diary describes “incidents concerning the War” and how they affected the Shakers at the South Union colony in Logan County, Kentucky. Both Union and Confederate forces took advantage of the Shakers’ reputation for industry and charity to demand supplies of food, clothing, horses and shelter. Eldress Nancy’s diary chronicles the difficulties the pacifist Shakers experienced under these circumstances, and includes comments on news of the war elsewhere. Also included in this collection is an account book and diary of unknown female authorship recording daily life at the South Union Shaker colony from 1 January to 27 October 1866.
Note that Eldress Nancy’s journal has been published as The Journal of Eldress Nancy (Nashville Tenn.: Parthenon Press, 1963), edited and with an introduction, glossary and index by Mary Julia Neal. See also related research materials in the Mary Julia Neal Collection (MSS 4). A second diary of Eldress Nancy, covering the period 17 January 1863 to 4 September 1864, is also held in Manuscripts & Folklife Archives (see MSS 62).“ (From TopSCHOLAR, The Research & Creative Activity Database of Western Kentucky University [https://digitalcommons.wku.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=3078&context=dlsc_mss_fin_aid])

Nancy Ely Moore died on December 5, 1889, in South Union, Logan County, Kentucky, when she was eight-two years old, reportedly from complications of a stroke.