This sampler consists of finely worked alphabets, one in a two-tone eyelet stitch. Susan also included a tight and fine signature, verse, scene of two trees (note the little blue urn under the willow) and a footed basket of flowers on the lawn. The border is of a large flower blossom and leaves on a vine. A very similar flower blossom motif is seen on the Mary Magdalene Lotspeich sampler from nearby Hopkinsville, Christian County, Kentucky, albeit a different instructress (Nancy Western Lotspeich, Mary Magdalene's mother).

Susan’s verse has been attributed to James Constable, who died in 1838 in Surrey, England. It was said that he was fond of creating verse (see Claire Constable, The Constables of Horley Hill [Tunbridge Wells: Surrey Mills Publishing, 2001]: pp. 336-37). The earliest printed version of the verse that I have been able to find was included in The Rural Repository Devoted to Polite Literature, vol. 14, new series (Saturday, June 24, 1837, p. 8). The verse reads:
The past what is it but a gleam
Which memory faintly throws,
The future 'tis the fairy dream
That fear and hope compose
The present is the lighting glance
That comes and disappears,
Thus life is but a moment's trance,
of memories, hopes and fears.

Signed:
Susan Garth's sampler worked under the inspection of Mrs. Lucy Ann Day at
Union Hill Academy, Todd County, Kentucky August the 14th in the year 1840

The Garth family came from Virginia in 1810 and remained in Todd County Kentucky for generations. Mary Susan Garth was born October 8, 1833 in Todd County, Kentucky to William Anderson Garth (1798-1843) and Elizabeth Baker Saffaran. In 1849, Susan married John H. Bell (1826-1907) and they had eight children: Kitty (1854), Addie (1856), Garth (1857), Jennie (1860), Darwin (1862), Webb C. (1864), Mary (1868), John (1872). The 1880 US Census from Longview, Christian, Kentucky, shows all the children still living at home. The teacher, Lucy Ann Lipscomb was born in 1813 in Virginia. She married Rev. Charles M. Day in 1831, moving to Kentucky in 1840 -- both evidently took up school teaching at that time. She died sometime before December 1851, when records indicate Rev. Day married Mary Chilton Perkins. Both families are fully discussed in the 1884 History of the County of Todd, Kentucky. According to notes from that book, Elijah Garth (Susan's paternal grandfather) was "an intimate friend of President Jefferson."