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A black sampler is just like a little black dress, a quintessential symbol of timeless elegance. It is a statement of sophistication and distinction. Every sampler wall should have at least one!
Coco Chanel described simplicity as the key to elegance, and the sampler that Georgiana worked as a child is quite simply elegant. Worked in black silk, the exquisitely laid stitches demonstrate that Georgiana was skilled in marking stitch. I fell in love with her sampler the moment I saw it, and the very day it arrived, I sat down to reproduce the sampler and started to stitch the model.
Georgiana Caroline Williams had a fine pedigree. She was the only daughter of Lieutenant-Colonel Richard Michael Williams of the 3rd King’s Own Hussars of Tregullow, Cornwall and Georgiana Sophia, née Phillpotts. Her paternal grandfather was the first 1st Baronet Williams of Tregullow, High Sheriff of Cornwall. The Williams were a prominent and wealthy Cornish mining family. Georgiana’s maternal grandfather was the Reverend Thomas Phillpotts, Honourable Canon of Truro.
Georgiana was born in 1859 in Kildare, Ireland whilst her father was stationed there. We believe that the sampler was stitched in Cornwall, England. The family were living at the Manor House in Wolston, England in 1867 when her father died on Christmas day. Afterwards, Georgiana, her mother and two brothers are recorded as living at Porthgwidden with a retinue of servants which included a housekeeper, under housekeeper, two lady’s maids, footman, groom, cook and other servants.
Georgiana married Anthony Ernest Henley, 5th Baron Henley of Chardstock on August 31, 1882. Their wedding took place at Rev. Philpott’s home Porthgwidden. This elegant mansion is mentioned in Rex Barratt’s book “Stately Homes in and around Truro”.
Six years later, on August 26, 1888, the Honourable Georgiana Caroline Henley died at 1 Milton Villas, Prittlewell, Essex. She was only 29 years of age. The cause of death was recoded as “diabetic coma of 3 or 4 months”. She was buried in the churchyard of St John the Baptist at Southend-on-Sea. There were no children recorded as being born to Georgiana. Anthony remarried just one year after Georgiana’s passing. He succeeded to the title of Baron Henley of Chardstock in 1923 and died in 1925.
The Williamses were one of the greatest mining dynasties in the Old World. The family are well documented, notably because of their ambitious entrepreneurism during the early industrial revolution, when Cornwall’s tin and copper industry prospered.
Several important local features are attributed to the Williams family: the Great County Audit and the Portreath Mineral Tramway, circa 1809 – the first railway of its kind anywhere in the world. This was Cornish mining in its heyday, a period that has left its relics strewn across the county’s interior. It was also a period that made the Williams family extremely wealthy. The history of the Williams family of Caerhays, Scorrier, Burncoose, and Tregullow near Redruth is the story of Cornwall. Emerging from obscurity in the later 1600s in the country between Redruth and Penryn, the family became Cornwall’s most successful mine managers and investors during the 1700s. The family expanded into banking and were accepted, after some hesitation, into the circles of Cornwall’s traditional landed class.
In 1822 the partnership of Williams, Foster and Company was set up as the family moved into copper smelting in South Wales. By this time, their commercial interests stretched to London and Liverpool, and overseas to Ireland. The move into smelting proved a lucrative one. By the mid-1800s, the Williamses were probably the wealthiest family in Cornwall.
It is believed that when Winston Graham wrote the Poldark books he based the Warleggan family on the Williamses.
Georgiana executed her sampler with cross stitches laid over two threads of linen. The sampler is suitable for needleworkers of all levels of ability.
