Thank you very much for replying. Perhaps I should explain what this is about. These girls don't belong to my family. I have (and have always had since I can remember) two samplers on my bedroom wall, which my mother picked up probably in an antique shop in the 50s or 60s probably in Angus (although that is not sure). I was looking at one of them the other day and thought that I might be able to find out who made them. The larger one has two names on it: Jane Spalding aged 14 1827 and Elizabeth Spalding aged 13 1839. I have now noticed that besides the alphabet and pictures of crowns, animals, trees etc there are quite a lot of what I took to be random letters but in actual fact I think that they are probably initials of close family members, especially because there are so many Ss (presumably for Spalding). I am going to write down all the "random" letters and see if I can work out something about who the family was. I thought that this might be a wonderful find for someone researching this family.The smaller one has only one name on it (Hutcheson) but I will look into that at a later date. Susan
