This sampler is the second sampler to emerge from a school that existed between at least 1825 and 1828, and seems to have been located in Louisville, Kentucky or elsewhere in Kentucky (see below). The other sampler was made in 1825 by Louisiana Shrader of Louisville, was published in Carol & Stephen Huber's 2003 Sampler Calendar, and is currently owned by the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation. It is similarly large and of vertical format, with extraordinary borders of large white blossoms and with a pair of curved-handled basket of fruit stacked high at the lower corners. Both sampler makers included many renditions of the alphabet, a cautionary verse, and the inscription, much of the lettering very precisely worked in black silk.

Eleanor Reeve’s sampler has two large urns, each containing a cone shaped, fruit bearing tree on either side of the base. Above each tree is a spiral, leafed vine with flowers and four perched birds. Outside and near the top of each tree, begins a flowered vine border, that transitions through eight flower and six vine types, with three large flowers at the top. Inside of the floral border and from the top down are eight rows of upper case alphabets and numbers separated by narrow crossbands, a row of large flowers with leaves, four rows of upper case alphabets and numbers, a row of lower case alphabets, and two rows of cursive, upper case alphabets. Embroidered below is the verse and signature:
I long to see the time
When immortal I shall be
To shout and praise my Saviour
Through vast eternity

Eleanor Reeve Oct 21 1828.

Eleanor Reeve was born in May 1819 in Posey County, Indiana. Her grandfather, Asa Reeves was born about 1739 in eastern Virginia, was an acknowledged patriot of the American Revolution for providing provisions and transport for the cause. He married Sarah Lambert Reeve and migrated to western Virginia to land that became part of Kentucky upon its statehood in 1792. Asa Reeves appears in a 1790, Mason County tax record and in the 1810 census in Flemingsburg, Fleming County, Kentucky, with four adult sons, including William, Eleanor's father. On November 9, 1806, William Reeves wed Elinor/Eleanor Wood in Fleming County, Kentucky. Prior to 1818, William Reeves and family emigrated to newly opened Indian lands in southwestern Indiana. It is assumed that Eleanor was sent up-river to Kentucky, either Louisville or another town (possibly the Bourbon Academy for boys and girls operated between 1806 and the early 1820’s in Paris, Bourbon County, Kentucky or possibly to Mrs. Tevis' Science Hill Academy), for her education. She was nine years of age when the sampler was dated and again, the sampler is quite similar to a sampler made by Louisiana Shrader dated 1825 and attributed to Kentucky based on strong genealogical research tying the Schraders to Kentucky. The Kentucky attribution of the Reeve sampler is based on the strong similarities to the Shrader sampler and the Shrader’s ties to Louisville, Kentucky.
On February 22, 1836, Eleanor Reeves wed James J. Knowles (b. Indiana) and they settled in Robb Township of Posey County, Indiana. James Knowles was a farmer, and possibly an elder in the Presbyterian Church, and the couple had eleven children including Caroline, Nancy, Patsy, Mary, Martha, Drusilla, Oscar and Clara Bell. James Knowles died sometime after 1870. Eleanor is listed as a widow residing at 1607 Walnut Street in an 1885-87 Directory of Evansville, Indiana, and died there July 24, 1903 at age 84.

Further research on the Eleanor Reeve and Louisiana Shrader samplers and on their school/instructress is ongoing.