Gloria Seaman Allen applies her formidable research and narrative skills to the fledgling District of Columbia, bringing to light heretofore unknown details and full-color images for nearly 130 samplers and pictorial embroideries stitched in the first years of the nation's capital. Columbia's Daughters examines the political, economic, and social dynamics of Alexandria, Georgetown and Washington City, the three urban centers that merged to create the District of Columbia as the nation entered the nineteenth century. Here are the lives and little-known schools of needlework teachers and students who witnessed the emergence of a new federal identity in a turbulent time―and left embroidered records of what they saw. About the author: Gloria Seaman Allen, a former curator and then director of the Daughters of the American Revolution Museum in Washington, D.C., has written and lectured extensively on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century textiles and textile workers from the Chesapeake region. In addition to exhibition catalogs and two books, A Maryland Album: Quiltmaking Traditions, 1634-1934 and A Maryland Sampling: Girlhood Embroidery, 1738-1860, she has written more than thirty-five articles on textiles and decorative arts for such publications as The Magazine Antiques, Sampler and Antique Needlework Quarterly, PieceWork, Winterthur Portfolio, and the Journal of Early Southern Decorative Arts. She lives with her partner, two dogs, and two cats on the Eastern Shore of the Chesapeake Bay.