Map sampler made at Pleasent Valley Quaker Boarding School 1809 Polly Platt Map samplers worked by schoolgirls emerged in Britain during the late eighteenth century. The tradition eventually spread to North America, though it was not practiced with the same frequency as in Britain. Map samplers originated from maps printed on paper that could also be printed on textiles for girls and young women to embroider and embellish. The double hemisphere map of the world was a printed image that could be marketed to schools in the United States as well as in Britain, highlighting the two countries cultural and pedagogical ties. This sampler is a fine example of those produced by students at the Pleasant Valley Quaker boarding school in New York in the first quarter of the nineteenth century. The schools three Quaker founders, Ann Shipley, her daughter-in-law Phebe Shipley, and her niece Agnes Abbatt Dean, had family connections to Quaker schools in England where map samplers had evolved in the