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Journal of Undergraduate Research

Keywords

needlework samplers, early Utah women, relationships, immigration, pioneers

College

Family, Home, and Social Sciences

Department

History

Abstract

Receiving the Creative Research Grant for this project has been valuable in not only carrying out extensive research on this topic, but also in opening new ideas and opportunities for my future academic career. I gathered and read numerous books and articles in the broad area of women’s history and in the more narrow topics of immigration, western expansion, and needlework, that are more closely associated with my topic. I was able to take three credit hours of research credit from the History Department which allowed me time for the many hours it took to research and order these books and articles through inter-library loan and the bookstore. I also gained confidence in working with artifacts in museums as I worked with curators of museum collections at the LDS Church Museum of History and Art, the Daughters of the Utah Pioneers Museum, and the Lion House and the Beehive House. Even though gaining access to all of these places was not easy, they all eventually allowed me to take close-up pictures of their samplers. I gained an appreciation of the rich resource to historians that these collections can be, and realized at the same time that institutions such as these are not designed to be as “user-friendly” to the outside researcher as special collection rooms in libraries traditionally have been. I became familiar with museums, their acquisition and cataloging process, and seriously considered the possibility of working in that profession.

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