Another family mystery has landed in my inbox after a reader came across a series of columns I wrote in late 2022/early 2023 about a set of three needlework samplers that had been hanging in my family kitchen for years.
Two were done by ancestors on my mum’s side of the family while the third was by a little girl called Hannah Raw, who was only nine when she created it in 1835, but about whom we knew nothing.
Following some expert internet sleuthing by my wonderful readers, over the following weeks and months we managed to flesh out much of Hannah’s story, discovering that by the age of 13 she was an orphan, but later married a John Hall, had two children, and even later became a grandmother. She died in 1890 aged 64 and was buried at St Thomas’ Church, Glaisdale. I was ultimately able to find her grave and go and pay my respects.
Sarah Duce, who is based in Limerick, Ireland, got in touch: “I am interested in a school of samplers based around Lastingham. My great aunt Hannah Stonehouse…in 1808 completed a sampler which is quite rare apparently and recently sold to the States for a tidy sum because it depicted the Napoleonic Wars.”
Sarah’s family came originally from Lastingham, but moved first to Hartlepool then to Scunthorpe. Sarah moved to Ireland 30 years ago and is trying to piece together her North Yorkshire roots.
She goes on to explain that Hannah Stonehouse’s sampler was one of four about which she is trying to find out more. “I believe one might have been by a Mary Wilson who was born around 1791 in Hartoft, and wondered if there might have been some sort of connection…I believe my Great Grandma x5, Sarah Harding (nee Smith), may have been the teacher of these girls…She was schoolmistress of Lastingham following the death of her schoolmaster husband from consumption at the young age of 30.”
It was not unusual for widows to take on the work of their late husbands to earn a living to support themselves and their children. Sarah had three little ones, the youngest just two weeks old, and was still the schoolmistress at the age 80, as revealed in her entry on the 1841 census.
Sarah wondered if Hannah Raw was one of the girls sent to the Lastingham sewing school. She explains that her 5x great grandmother Sarah would have had no formal education and was likely illiterate at the time of her marriage “…so must have brushed up her skills quickly, but maybe sewing was the backbone of her teachings…I also saw during my research…a newspaper of 1997 illustrating a 1841 sampler by Ann Raw, age 16, entitled the ‘South View of the Minster’…I wonder if there might be a connection there?”
I cannot answer that question, and Lastingham is a good 15 miles away from where Hannah Raw lived in the Lealholm area. But perhaps a family history sleuth reading this might be able to help, as they did before when finding out such useful information about Hannah. Raw is a common name, and I would imagine that to produce an image of that view of York Minster in 1841, Ann would have had to have sat in front of it to know what it looked like. That would possibly mean she would have been living in York, which in the 19th century was a long journey from the North York Moors. She was a similar age to Hannah Raw, so perhaps they were cousins?
I found an image of the sampler in question on a Facebook page run by Witney Antiques, an Oxfordshire-based specialist in embroidery and samplers. They describe it as follows:
‘This sampler, which shows a view of York Minster, was completed by 16-year-old Ann Raw on 14th February 1841. Her handling of the cathedral’s stained glass window is incredibly charming, as is the depiction of grazing sheep and cattle in the grass next to the building.’
Sarah ended her message by saying: “You never know where little snippets of info can come from, so you have to keep asking!”
You do indeed, Sarah, and I am hoping that someone reading this might just have the key to the little snippets we are looking for.
Do you have opinions, memories or ideas to share with me? Get in touch with me using the ‘Contact’ button on the top right.
This column appeared in the Darlington & Stockton Times on Friday 13th and the Ryedale Gazette and Herald on Wednesday 11th March 2026
The Countryman's Daughter 