Sampler by Elizabeth Roebuck, 1838.
Conservation funded by the Otago Porcelain Dollmakers' Guild Inc in 2005.

Wool fabric, silk threads, 325mm x 280mm.

This English sampler has a plain weave ground embroidered with polychrome silk threads. There is lettering and numbers at the top of the sampler, and under this there is a verse, which reads: Love thou Lord and he will be, A tender father unto thee.
To the sides of the verse and underneath are images of flowers, birds, other animals, crosses and three figures. The sewer’s name, age and date are underneath this. Then there is a further verse, which reads: With all thy soul love God above And as thyself thy neighbor love. The bottom section has more examples of flowers, and the whole sampler has a scrolling style border. The ground fabric is hemmed on the top, bottom and left side, while the two blue-lined selvedge is located on the right side.

Elizabeth Roebuck, born circa 1825, was a member of the family from St Pancras, London, some of whose members were very early Otago settlers. Charles and Elizabeth Roebuck came to Nelson in 1842 and then on to Otago the next year. They preceded the main settlement by the Scottish-based Otago Association by five years and were still here when those settlers arrived in 1848. It is not clear how Elizabeth was connected to the Otago Roebucks – she is too old to have been one of Charles and Elizabeth’s children but would have been of the same generation, perhaps a niece. Her sampler is displayed here with one by Mrs Charles Roebuck, Elizabeth Palmer, that was worked twenty years earlier, and another by Alison Monson, Mrs Rosebuck’s grand-daughter, worked forty years later. The family grouping provides an interesting survey of sampler embroidery through three generations over sixty years. The Roebuck sampler was donated to the Museum in 1993 from the estate of Ian Monson McLean.