Provenance Made by Annie Penney in 1840. From a Lexington, Kentucky area private collection and sold at Case Antiques Auctions & Appraisals, January 23, 2016 lot #267 to Private Collector #8. Prior to this, the sampler was sold at House of The Ferret, Traditional Antiques, in South Deerfield, MA.
Description The sampler has a decorative center floral spray cartouche, adorable bird and butterfly images at each lower corner, and partial strawberry border at the top and sides. This border encloses a partial alphabet of the vowels and an unusual, perhaps coded group of consonants. The verse reads:
When Youth soft seasons are all oer
And scenes of childhood charm no more
My riper years with joy shall see
this proof of youthful industry
Signed:
Wrought by
Miss Annie Penney
At Finchville during
the summer of 1846
Overall the sampler is in very good condition with minimal fading and discoloration.
Ann Graves Penney was born May 17, 1834 in Boyle County, Kentucky when her father, Thomas James Penny (1800-1860), was thirty four years old and her mother, Mary Josephine Begley (1812-1857), was twenty two. Annie had seven siblings including Mary J (1836-1903), Sarah Sally (1837-1917), John W. (1840-?), Charles Thomas (1841-1907), George A. (1842-?), Almeda (1843-?), and Joshua B. (1850-?).
Annie married Joseph Ranson Tewmey (1825-1884)(see ancillary images) on August 30, 1851 and the 1860 census shows that she, her physician husband, and two children living in Perryville, Kentucky also located in Boyle County. She ultimately had six children including Leslie M.(1860-1860), Nannie (1869-1897), Maggie (1866-1882), William Thomas (1862-1933), Mary W. (1852-1924), and James Malcolm (1857-1944).
Annie died on March 13, 1897, at the age of sixty-three in Harrodsburg, Mercer, County Kentucky and is buried in the Bethel Cumberland Presbyterian Church Cemetery in Mercer County, Kentucky.
Finchville is a small historic crossroads town in Shelby County, Kentucky, about fifteen miles east of Louisville.
