Prudence Punderson’s Needlepoint
Prudence Punderson, a Loyalist’s daughter, married a Patriot. She created this needlework reflecting on life and death in Connecticut during the American Revolution.
Punderson was born in Preston, CT in 1758, the first of her wealthy parents’ eight children. When the war began, her father sided with the British. In November 1778, Prudence fled for Long Island, where her father was a commissary for the King’s Troops. She was already engaged to be married to Timothy Rossiter, a New London doctor who was a surgeon in the Continental Army.
This silk needlework, entitled “The First, Second, and Last Scene of Mortality,” is regarded as one of the most extraordinary artworks made in early America. Against a backdrop of the trappings of wealth – artwork, fine furniture, and an enslaved child who may have been named Jenny – Punderson depicts the arc of life from infancy to adulthood to a casket she has marked with her own initials: PP. Punderson married Rossiter in 1783 and died the next year, one month after giving birth to a daughter named Sophia.
The artwork is in the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History in Hartford.
Credits
Prudence Punderson’s needlepoint is in the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History in Hartford.