The sampler has a strawberry border on its left and right sides with five rows of alphabets separated by simple crossbands in the upper third of the field. In the middle third, there is a basket of flowers with folksy floral sprigs, motifs, birds, and a nearly circumferential vine and strawberry border around the tenth stanza of Alexander Pope’s “The Universal Prayer” which reads:
Teach me to feel another’s woe
To hide the fault I see
That mercy I to others show
That mercy show to me.

Below the verse is a brick Federal style house, gate and fence, with the names of her parents:
Thomas Hook and Sarah Hook, and brothers Samuel and Thom(as). The sampler in incomplete with the reason for this unknown to AKS. The samplermaker’s name is absent, as are the names of her other siblings.

Martha “Patsy” Hook was born in Bourbon County, Kentucky in 1800 to Thomas Hook (1770-1840) and Sarah “Sally” Long (?-?) who had removed from Maryland to Bourbon County, Kentucky by 1793. Patsy’s siblings included James (1793-1850)(born in Bourbon County, Kentucky), Matilda (1800-?), Thomas (~1804-1850), Samuel (~1806-1830), and William Henry (1815-1885)as well as Nancy (?-?), Polly (?-?), and Elizabeth (?-?).

Patsy married Elijah Beeding (1802-1830), of Mason County, Kentucky on September 6, 1824 in Nicholas County, Kentucky. Their first two children, James M. (1824-1852) and Millie (1827-1916), were born in Nicholas County, Kentucky, while their third child, Thomas H. (1829-1911), was born in Callaway County, Missouri. By 1829, Elijah and Patsy had removed to Missouri along with her parents, becoming early pioneers of that state. Elijah Breeding died in Callaway County, Missouri on October 30, 1830, leaving Patsy a young widow. She married James Sims (1803-1891) on February 24,1833, but died less than a year later in 1834 also in Callaway County, Missouri.

The sampler has descended in Patsy’s family with the oral attribution to Martha “Patsy” Hook as its maker.