The sampler has a circumferential vine and strawberry border with six rows of alphabets and numbers separated by narrow crossbands in the upper two thirds of the field. In the lower aspect, there are two urns of flowers and a bird motif , unused space suggesting it may be partially unfinished, with a signature which reads:

A sampler wrought
By Susan Elmonia
McRoberts in the
8th year 1851

There is some thread loss and toning but little fading (see the inverse verso and the verso in the ancillary images).

Susan Elmonia "Mona/Monie” McRoberts was born on August 10, 1844, in Kentucky, the daughter of Ellen Slaughter Gaines (1817-1890), and George Thompson McRoberts (1820-1903). She had siblings included Rebecca A. “Bella”(1846-1924), Benjamin Bollen (1848-1931), Elizabeth Almour “Bettie” (1854-1952), and Thomas George (1857-1921).
Mona married Joshua L Dunn (1833-1904) on October 31, 1865, in Lincoln County, Kentucky. They had four children including George Thomas (1866-1955), twins Edgar Gaines (1869-1959) and Sarah Ella (1869-1963), and James Harvey (1872-1962).
Census records show Mona living in Lincoln County, Kentucky possibly near Stanford in 1860, in Bryantsville, Garrard County, KY in 1870 and 1880, in Brodhead, Rockcastle County, KY in 1900 and in Precinct 12, Boyle County, KY in 1910.

She died on May 20, 1914, at the age of six-nine, and was buried in Bellevue Cemetery, Danville, Boyle County, Kentucky. (See the ancillary images.)