$652
Briggs Family Needlework Memorial, Scituate, Massachusetts, c. 1792, stitched with silk threads on a silk ground over linen, the memorial portrays a pair of urn-topped monuments below a weeping willow with a town in the distance, the urns inscribed "DB" and "JB" above the stitched inscription: "To the Memory of Deborah Briggs who died August 11th 1782/aged 21 years & James Briggs 3'd who died October 12 1792/Aged 40 years," (toning, stains u.l.), 10 x 9 1/4 in., in a period molded giltwood frame. Note: This sampler memorializes a husband and wife, James Briggs 3rd, b. March 14, 1753, and his wife Deborah Clapp, b. January, 19, 1761. James was the son of Hannah (Barker) and Captain James Briggs. Captain Briggs was in the French and Indian War and the Revolutionary War, and was a ship builder in Scituate, Massachusetts, who in 1773 built the famous ship Columbia, the first American ship to circumnavigate the globe. James and Deborah were married May 17, 1781. This memorial may have been stitched by their only daughter, Deborah Clapp Briggs, who was born April 10, 1782, a month before her mother died. She lived to be 17 years old, dying August 10, 1799. Genealogical information found in History of shipbuilding on North river, Plymouth county, Massachusetts: with genealogies of the shipbuilders and accounts of the industries upon its tributaries 1640-1872. By Vernon Briggs, Boston, 1889.
Auctioneer:
Skinner
Date:
2010-11-07
